Curiosity Killed The Cat
by stark-obsessed247
Summary: Katie Rover is advanced. When she gets a visit from Director Fury of SHIELD, she has no choice but to keep to her promise and go in as an Avenger. But a certain Iron-clad superhero is definately going to be a distraction. And what happens when her past comes back up to haunt her? High School Teenage Avengers AU. Tony Stark X OC. Rated for language and possible sexual scenes.
1. Chapter 1

_**This is my first fanfiction that I've decided to publish. I'm hoping that if I publish a story then it might help me carry on with one.**_

Katie rover was sat on the chair of her small apartment. Her feet were crossed onto the wooden coffee table and one empty bottle of Irish whiskey and another half empty bottle sat next to them. Nothing littered the laminate flooring; there were no dishes in the sink, no photos on the walls, and no clothes in the wardrobe, no television on the stand and no books on the shelves. Everything was empty. She had lived in the apartment for almost two weeks and she would probably move out within the next three days.

She never spent long anywhere.

Katie grabbed the whiskey and took a long gulp straight from the bottle. She leant her head back on the chair and tried to concentrate on the temporary feeling the alcohol provided. It was because of her _advancements _that the alcohol only affected her for a few seconds.

After cleaning up everything she possibly could, Katie turned to the alcohol . . . again. She wasn't legal to drink. Not even close. She was legal in Ireland, but she hadn't been back there in 6 years.

She looked down to the small bandage around her hand. She sighed and lifted the bottle to her lips. The intoxicated feeling filled her for a few seconds before it dispersed and left her feeling slightly down. She put her head back again and closed her eyes.

Katie was trying to stay calm and chilled but it was still hard. It had gotten easier but the horrible feeling was still there.

She opened her eyes once more ad looked at the battered red Converse on her feet.

There was a loud knock at the door and Katie looked confusedly down at the time on the watch strapped to the inside of her watch. It was 6 in the evening which wasn't exactly late but the fact that nobody _ever _visited her made this knock highly unexpected.

Nevertheless, Katie placed the alcohol behind the chair to hide it and then somewhat cautiously answered the door.

As the lousy wooden door was cracked open, the air was knocked out of Katie. She opened the door fully to stare Director Nick Fury straight in the face. Fury standing at her door could only mean one thing. Her _advancements _were needed. She moved to the side and the director invaded her nice safe apartment with his official unsafe business.

The director, clad in black, sat in the armchair opposite Katie. He sat with a perfectly straight back while Katie sat with her elbows propped on her knees and her fingers knitted together.

They had been sat in silence for a few minutes. "I never thought we would be having this conversation." Katie said without looking up to Fury whose gaze was burning into her skull.

"Believe me, neither did I."

"So why are you here?"

"The situation has become a cause for concern."

"What situation? So much of a concern that you have to call me in?" she finally looked up.

"Don't act stupid Katie; I know that you know which situation. You must have got too used to acting in your four years out of training."

"I'm not acting stupid, not with you. I'm humouring myself. Trying to see how much you've forgotten."

"Trust me. I haven't forgotten anything."

Katie scoffed and rolled her eyes. "Ok, well. Tell me director; have you forgotten why I needed training in the first place?"

"It's hard to forget why you needed training. It's hard to forget the state you were in when the agents bought you in."

That sentence seemed to prick something inside Katie. "Yeah, well that part of me is gone now, for good."

"Is it Katie? Is it really gone?"

Katie didn't want to answer. She couldn't say it to herself. But she kept her eyes locked on Fury's. "You've been drinking." Fury accused as he looked down at the whiskey bottles. "Is that your new way of coping?"

"You could call it that." Katie said quietly and finally broke her eyes from the Directors. She looked down to her knees.

"Well I hate to inform you but the legal drinking age is 21."

"I'll be fine as long as no one tells on Me." she looked back up and smiled slightly.

There was quiet for a minute until Fury spoke up. "I know that you know about it."

"About what? The Avengers Initiative?" Fury nodded. "Of course I know about it. I know everything."

"You aren't _that _good."

"Lots of things change in 6 years." She said somewhat solemnly. "Is that why you're calling me in? You're getting the avengers together again?"

Fury took an intake of breathe as he thought of how to explain it. "After the Chitauri invasion, there was controversy about my team. A certain extremist group has taken it one step farther. Death threats have been found. They are getting worryingly close to finding us. I think that since you aren't known about then maybe it will make the group think twice about following them."

"Ok," Katie said slowly as she processed the information. "Your group might be being followed and you think that a new girl would throw these extremists off of the scent?"

"Exactly."

"Is there anything else?"

"Yeah," Fury said hesitantly. "You and the others are just young enough to go to the last year of high school."

Katie's face turned blank. "You're going to have to give me a minute to get my head around this one." She said after a minute. "I haven't been to school since I was 12, and you know the reason that I dropped out, and _now _you want _me_ to go to an _American_ high school?"

"Yeah." Fury was speaking like he expected her to turn him down.

Katie sighed. "Ah well," she smiled. "It'll be an adventure."

Fury stood up and smiled, quickly mirrored by Katie. "It's nice doing business with you miss Rover."

"Looking forward to it." they shook hands and then Fury walked to leave the apartment.

"I'm not going to pretend that you don't know where you're going."

"Of course I know where I'm going. I've known where you've been based for years."

"Good, I expect you to be at the SHIELD HQ by 10 tonight. That gives you just under 4 hours to get there."

"Yes sir."

Without another word, Fury left the apartment with a simple nod.

Katie waited for a minute until she heard the car drive off. She walked back into the middle of the apartment and frantically dug in her pockets. She pulled out the keys to her apartment and 2 dog tags on a necklace. She took a few deep breaths as she felt the cold metal and gently fingered the pressed letters.

**KATIE**

**ROVER**

**14/6/95**

**RANK- A**

**RANGER**

She took a deep breath. "Here goes nothing." she said quietly to herself before she looked the necklace over her head. There was no turning back now. She was in and there was no running away this time.

Katie sniffed and pulled her van keys off of the apartment keys. She picked up the whiskey and downed it. She threw the bottles in the bin and then left the apartment. She stared at the door before she locked it and pulled a 20 dollar bill out of her wallet.

On the way out of the building she posted the keys and the money through the landlords' door.

Katie sighed and jumped into the white van. She kept her whole life in that van. There were her clothes and all the basics and then there was her motorbike, her BMX, her skateboard and her skates.

She started the ban and pushed it into gear before she started the 2 and a half hour journey to SHIELD HQ.

. . . . . . . . . . . .

Katie had cruised to SHIELD, she couldn't be bothered to rush, and it was dark when she arrived. She parked up and walked inside.

"Excuse me miss. You can't be in here." An agent rushed over to her. Katie simply flashed the dog tag at him. The agent was taken aback and a look of shock and slight respect appeared on his face. Katie walked on.

Agent Phil Coulson stepped out of his formal stance and joined her in walking through the main hall. "Miss Rover," he addressed. "Director Fury told me that we would be expecting you."

"I'm sure he did." Katie said without breaking pace.

"You're wanted in meeting room 5. Here's a small brief and a map of the new HQ." Phil handed her the file and sheet of paper. Katie took them, looked quickly at each page and then handed them back. Phil looked at her with a confused look. Katie smiled. "Your 4 years o f training taught me quite a few lessons Phil." She said and he smiled slightly triumphantly.

"I used to wonder if my hard work was actually worth it. And now I know." He said and took the papers. "anyway, meeting room five is just on your left."

"Thanks Phil, it's been nice talking to you again."

"You too Katie." He said and they shook hands and Katie walked away

After a minute, she stopped and smiled. "I know you're there widow." She said in a just audible tone. She turned around and Natasha Romanoff landed softly in front of her.

They smiled at each other and then embraced each other in a tight hug. Katie liked Natasha's hugs. There was no denying that Natasha was deadly, and yet her hugs were so soft. Since they hadn't seen one other in 4 years, that particular hug was just what Katie needed.

"Ouch!" she pulled back suddenly as she felt the jab in her arm. She looked over to Natasha who was holding a vile of blood. "I hate you so much!" she said sarcastically. "If you'd asked, then I would have just let you."

"But this way was more fun."

Katie rolled her eyes. "Clint, you can come down too." She shouted and there was a small '_whoosh' _of wind as Hawkeye landed next to Natasha. They went to hug but Katie stopped. "Needles?" she asked.

"No, of course not."

Katie was happy about this and they finally hugged.

They pulled away and Katie discretely eyed up how close the two agents were standing. "Has Fury called you in for a meeting?" she asked.

"Yeah," Clint said. "Meeting room 5."

Katie smiled and laughed slightly. "That'll be because of me." the agents looked at her, confused. "I'm an avenger." She informed them.

"What!?" they both said in unison.

"Yup." She pulled out her dog tags and showed them the 'RANK- A'. They took out their own tags and compared them. "I don't believe it." Natasha said. "How come you weren't helping with the Chitauri?" she asked.

"I didn't want anything to do with SHIELD after I left. But this one was urgent, Fury will explain."

"Ok." Natasha said and the three walked down into the meeting room.

Inside sat Steve Rogers, Bruce Banner and Thor. "Well, here are 3 of them." Fury exclaimed as they walked in.

"Um," Steve said as he looked at Katie. "Who's this?"

"This is Katie Rover, I'd explain more but we're missing one other person as per usual." Fury said somewhat angrily.

Katie ignored the Director. "It's nice to meet you." She said as she shook hands with Steve. Her accent coming out clearly.

"Irish?"

"Yeah."

"Nice,"

Katie shook hands with Bruce and Thor and then took a seat next to Steve and Natasha.

The door opened and Tony Stark strolled in. "look who decided to show up." Fury said.

"Yeah, sorry about that." Tony said, not really paying attention or meaning it.

"Sit down Stark!" fury ordered and Tony did so but without being phased by Fury's tone. He pulled out his phone. "Can we get started?" Fury said, not really asking permission.

Tony looked up and realised that the Director was talking to him. "Yeah, sure. Go ahead."

"Thank you, now, the rest of you have met her. But this is Katie Rover. She's the new addition to the Avengers team." He gestured to Katie "none of you will have heard of her before, SHIELD made sure of that. She's originally from Ireland as Steve observed. If you want to know about her powers then you'll have to ask her yourself. And you'll have plenty of time to do so because Katie's going to be living with you in Stark tower."

Tony finally decided to acknowledge the new girls presence. The girl was pretty so he decided not to make a fuss about her living with them.

If he was completely honest with himself, 'pretty' was an understatement. She had wavy, ebony black hair and big blue eyes which stood out from her flawless pale skin. She looked quite tall and thin and had classic Irish looks, with high cheeks, a straight nose and slightly sunken eyes.

Tony looked to his phone and typed her name into the search bar. The circular progress signal popped up and stayed there for several seconds before it disappeared. There were no results. That was strange. Tony's tech could hack anything and ye there were still no results about this girl. He sighed and sent a message to JARVIS to get a room ready.

"Can you get that sorted Stark?"

"In progress." He put his phone away and reached over Bruce. "I'm Tony Stark." he said with his usual

"Nice to meet you." She said, her accent clearly coming out.

"Now that you've all met," Fury said. "I can get onto the reason that you're all here in the first place."

There was quite for a minute as the Avengers waited for Fury to think of how to phrase it.

"After the Chitauri invasion, many people didn't want teenage superheroes looking out for them. One group has taken it farther than the rest. They call themselves the 'Unforgiven' and they have been posting on several websites and expressing their hatred. However, within the last week the posts have started saying they want you dead and they are finding increasing support and they claim that they know who you are.

"But what if they're lying?" Steve asked.

"I'm definitely not willing to take that chance."

"So what does that have to do with Katie?" Natasha said.

"Well, if we add another person into your group then it may confuse the group if they actually are watching you."

The Avengers were silent. Then Clint asked a question. "Wait, but how are they going to see her?"

"This is where it could get difficult." The group didn't move. "We're sending you all to high school."

Everyone looked at Fury like they had misheard what he said. Bruce was the first to speak. "I'm not bothered about going back to school but what I _am_ bothered about is the fact that you want _me _to spend 6 hours a day, 5 days a week in a rather small building with hundreds of temperamental teenagers."

"we've looked over all the factors and calculated that chances of the other guy making an appearance while you don't want to hurt anyone because you're in a school of teenagers are much lower than we thought."

Bruce seemed temporarily satisfied with this answer.

"Bruce may not have a problem with this," Tony said. "But I do. If we go parading ourselves around then aren't we putting ourselves in more danger?"

There was quiet for a moment. Katie had been staring at the floor for the whole time of this discussion, she was deep in thought. Listening to people's tones and the speed they spoke at. She was making profiles in her head. "Hide things in plain sight." Everyone was quite shocked that Katie had even spoke up, even Natasha and Clint. "We'd be so obvious that nobody would think to suspect." Everyone was trying to think of how that would work. "Oh, come on. Please don't tell me nobody's heard of 'it's so overt, it's covert.'" She said.

"Katie's right." Fury spoke. "Hide something in plain sight and it's rarely found."

Tony went slightly bitter once he found out that Katie was right but he tried not to show it.

"So you want us to go back to school?" Steve asked. "But it's almost half way through the year."

Fury took an exasperated sigh. "You're all already enlisted, it doesn't matter what you say, and you're all going."

Everyone groaned quietly. After a moment, Clint sighed and shrugged. "When do we start?" he said in an _oh well_ tone.

"Tomorrow morning." Fury said.

"Tomorrow morning!?" Natasha shouted. Everyone else was just gawking.

"Why are we only being told about this now?" Tony asked.

"Because it took us this long to find Katie." Fury looked over to her. "I must admit Miss Rover, you're hard to find."

"I'll take that as a compliment." She said.

"You should do," Bruce butted in. "I thought I was hiding for years and yet they always knew where I was. Anyone who can knowingly hide from SHIELD must be pretty good."

Katie looked over to him. "thanks." She smiled genuinely.

Bruce smiled back.

"That's it then." Fury clapped his hands once to gain everyone's attention. "You all start school tomorrow." Fury said to the Avengers. "Oh, and you might want to take a trip to the nearest 24 hour store to get supplies. Meeting dismissed."

_**Ok, so this is the first chapter of my first published FanFic. Please don't give abuse. I need confidence if I am to keep writing. However, I'm open to 'constructive criticism' just please don't give me grief. Please review. XD**_


	2. Chapter 2- Ignorant!

_**Alright. So here's chapter 2. I never thought that uploading a chapter would make me want to carry on with a story. Thank you for favourite-ing and following. This chapter is sort of a filler chapter. Next chapter, hopefully, should be better. The Avengers will FINALLY be starting school. **_

Katie loaded her motorbike out of her van and pulled the keys out of her pocket. There was a BMX strapped to the inside of her van and her skateboard and a set of stunt skates were strapped to the opposite side with a few bags of belongings and clothes on hooks. She pulled her bike leathers off of a hook and pulled them over her ordinary clothes.

The rest of the group was getting into their own cars as Katie started her bike. The sound the bike made was heavenly. She waited for a few cars to pull off before she followed. She was behind Tony who was giving Bruce a lift in his Audi.

It took a few moments to get to the 24 hour store and when they were all parked up Katie made her way over to Clint and Natasha. She unzipped her leathers and the torso and arms hung lazily around her waist.

Steve and Thor went over to find folders and study books and Tony and Bruce went to find school bags.

Katie, Clint and Natasha were at the stationary. "So what are the others like?" Katie asked as she picked up a packet of pens. Katie was a very good judge of personal character but she wanted a second opinion. Besides, it had been a while since she had been able to confirm her thoughts with anyone.

"Well who do you want to know about?" Natasha asked, looking at the price of a pencil case.

"I don't know. Let's start with Bruce. What I managed to gain so far is that he's pretty smart. He doesn't seem like the type to speak up too much other than the odd snide comment. He and Tony seem really close, but that's just because they are both really scientifically minded. Tony was almost hard to figure out. He had a bit of oil round his wrist where it would have come over his latex gloves, that's how I could tell that he was mechanically as well as scientifically minded. He seems a little bit big of himself but other than that he seems really nice. Is that about right?"

Clint pulled air through his teeth. Katie looked at him. "What am I wrong?" she asked.

"No, well, Not exactly. You got Bruce right and most of Tony but 'a bit big of himself' is an understatement.

"How do you mean?"

"He's a 'genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist.'" Natasha said. "Tony's words, not mine. He can be pretty spoilt at times."

"Really?" Katie asked, with a surprised tone. Not many people could deceive her when it came to their personality.

"Yeah," Clint said. "Couldn't have put it better myself."

"Ok," Katie was still trying to get round how he could have managed to hide himself so well. "Well, Thor seems nice too but he still seems a little bit confused by this world. He seems slightly rude mostly in his manners. As for Steve, he just seems old fashioned which is understandable."

"That's pretty much right. You'll learn more about them in the next few days."

The 3 spent the next 10 minutes discussing idle chat conversations.

Meanwhile, Tony and Bruce were looking at the different array of school bags on sale in the shop.

"So what do you think about the new girl?" Bruce asked.

"She seems nice." Tony said, not really paying his full attention on his friend but instead was completely focused on the phone in his hands.

Bruce was expecting more than Tony's simple reply. "c'mon Mr.-my opinion-is-always-right, where's your opinion?"

Tony opened him mouth to answer but a confused mix angry expression popped on his face and distracted him. Bruce waited for a minute with an expectant look on his face. Bruce groaned and rolled his eyes before snatching the phone from the genius. "Tony, what one earth is so important that-"

Bruce looked at the screen. Tony grabbed the phone back but Bruce had already seen. Katie's name was in a search bar but there were no results. "What on . . . why were you . . . explain!"

Tony sighed and pushed his phone into his pocket. "I've been searching her name since I met her."

"And."

"There are no results."

"Fury did say they were hiding her."

"But they were hiding you and I still got your results."

"Then maybe it's a mistake."

"Bruce." He looked at his friend, unimpressed by his silly statement. "My tech doesn't _make _mistakes."

Bruce thought for a minute. "Have you tried her full name?"

"What? Her full name?" Tony pulled his phone out again and loaded the search bar.

"Well 'Katie' can be short for 'Kaitlin' or 'Katherine' and loads of others."

Tony tried 'Katherine' and 'Kaitlin' and 'Katrina' but still nothing came up. Tony put his home away, he was annoyed now. He was used to being able to just search up information on people and find out pretty much everything they had ever tried to hide. But this girl, this dark haired mysterious girl, fascinated him because he didn't know anything. "nothing." he said sourly.

Bruce sighed and shrugged. "Then I don't know." He looked over to the 'Gola' satchel he had been eyeing up for the last 5 minutes and picked it off of the shelf. Tony gave up and picked up a red rucksack before both boys made their way to the stationary.

Katie looked up from the art pencils as the two boys came around the corner. Something was bothering Tony and it was something to do with her and it was going to bother _her _if she didn't find out what.

Katie put on an awkward smile. "Hey Bruce, hey Tony." She said.

"Hi Katie." Bruce said. Tony just nodded. Katie dropped the half-smile she had and felt quite sad that already Tony was annoyed at her.

The agents and the newbie went over to look at bags and left Bruce and Tony behind. Katie still had the leathers hanging from her waist and as annoyed that Tony was, he couldn't help but watch her leave.

Once they were out of sight, Bruce punched Tony as hard as he could on the top of the arm. "Ow! What was that for?!"

Bruce shot daggers at him and spoke through gritted teeth. "There's no need to be rude. You could have at least been polite and said hello. You don't even know anything about her; she could be more emotionally damaged than us!" Tony looked down through shame. He felt like a child that had been scolded.

As much as he hated to admit it, Bruce was right.

"I get that it seems weird," Bruce continued with a calmer tone. "But Fury wouldn't have called her in if she could pose a threat."

After another half an hour of shopping, the group met up at the exit. Steve and Thor were the last to show up because Steve had needed to explain everything to Thor several times. It was an understatement to say that he looked a little bit exasperated.

The group paid and then made their way back to their cars. Katie didn't even make eye contact with Tony let alone talk to him.

Katie had followed Tony home but just reading his name on the number plate was annoying her, so she overtook him and smiled to herself when he went bitter about it.

When the Avengers got to Stark tower, Bruce and Tony went straight into the laboratory, despite the time, and Steve, Thor, Clint, Natasha and Katie went into the living room to relax.

Katie made everyone tea and coffee. Katie had tea along with Steve while Clint, Thor and Natasha had coffee. "Mmm," Steve sighed as he sat back into the soft cushions of the sofa. "This is amazing, how did you make this so good?" he asked.

"Well," Katie said as she sat back in the armchair. "Being a good judge of character also means I can tell your preferences. I can tell how black you like your drink and how milky and how many sugars. It's simple but it comes in quite handy sometimes."

Steve smiled and took another sip and closed his eyes to savour the moment. He opened his eyes. "You said you can judge character, what have you got down about us?" he asked.

"Um . . . what I've established so far is that, other than the obvious things like Thor is from another planet and you are from a different time period, you both seem like nice people. I've not had many people that I can say that about but I can genuinely say that I'd like to get to know you all more."

Steve and Thor smiled genuinely. The room was engulfed in silence as everyone took a gulp of their drinks. Thor's loud voice boomed around the room. "I feel as though I have just drunk liquid gold."

Katie chuckled. "I can honestly say, that is the weirdest compliment I have ever got about my drink-making skills." She said and even the poker-faced agents laughed.

The room was taken by silence once again except for the sound of Natasha necking the last of her coffee. Katie cocked an eyebrow at her. "You are most definitely _not _sleeping tonight." She said.

Natasha smiled and rolled her eyes. "C'mon smart ass. I'm gonna show you around." She began to walk away.

Katie groaned and gulped down her own drink. "I'll see you tomorrow guys." She said.

"Bye." The three boys replied as Katie ran after Natasha.

"Thank you." She said as she caught up with Widow and shoved her hands in her pockets. "I was kinda wondering when I was going to get shown around."

"Don't thank me too much; Tony's going to be showing you around."

Katie stopped walking and looked at her with an _are-you-serious_ look on her face. Natasha looked at her with an expectant gaze. "You're kidding me right." Katie said.

"No, I don't know where half the things are in this place. I don't even know how many levels there are."

Katie groaned. "Did you not see how ignorant he was earlier?"

"Of course I did but it's the first day, you can't make enemies within the first few hours."

Katie slumped. "I really don't want to admit that you're right."

"Don't then, just come on." Natasha beckoned her to hurry up and they came to the door of the workshop.

She knocked on the door and walked in.

Katie was surprised at how tidy it was. Bruce was over by a monitor and Tony was working on a piece of a car.

"Hey girls." Bruce said. At the mention of girls, Tony looked up. Katie expected him to see them and look back down but he didn't. He picked up a cloth and wiped the oil off of his hands before he walked over to them.

Katie did everything to stop herself from gawking. Tony was wearing slim fit Levi jeans and a black tee shirt which hugged his torso perfectly. His dark hair was scruffy and his brown eyes were so soft. Katie momentarily forgot how annoyed she was at him.

"Hey Bruce," Natasha said. "Tony, do you think you could show Katie round?"

Tony nodded. "Sure." Katie was shocked at his simple positive response. Tony walked over to her and looked at her expectantly.

"Um, thanks." Katie said slightly ashamed at how annoyed she had been at him.

Half an hour later and Tony and Katie had seen almost all of the building. "And this," Tony said as he opened yet another door. "Is the kitchen."

The two walked in and through to another living room. "So what are you really doing here?" Tony asked like it wasn't a personal question at all.

"Um," Katie didn't want to say anything but she figured than if he was actually trying to get to know her then she may as well repay him. "I was called into SHIELD when I was younger for training but I decided that I didn't want anything to do with them a few years later. However, I promised that I would come back when I was really needed. Apparently you're in trouble."

Tony smirked. "I guess you could say that, so your powers qualify to be an avenger?"

"Yeah, apparently."

"What do you do?"

"You'll have to figure that out yourself." She smiled and the billionaire smiled back.

"Tony!" Steve's voice shouted as he burst through the door. He looked at the pair. "Oh, I finally found you. The rest of us are going to bed."

"Ok," Tony said.

"See you in the morning Steve." Katie said and Steve smiled and nodded.

"Don't have too much fun on your own." He said as he began to walk away.

"Shut up Capsicle!" Tony shouted and the last thing the two heard was Steve's satisfied laughter.

Tony rolled his eyes and then looked back to Katie. "Have you met JARVIS yet?"

"JARVIS?"

"Yeah, hey JARV. You there?"

"Of course sir. Where else would I be?"

Katie gawked at the ceiling not realising how silly she looked. "Is that an AI?" she asked.

"Yeah."

"How did you fir him with sarcasm?"

"I modelled him on the old family butler so-"

"So you fit his voice tones into the AI's central system." She finished his sentence.

Tony looked at her, impressed. "How did you know that?"

"You and Bruce aren't the only ones in the building with a scientific mind anymore and you most definitely are not the only person with a mechanical mind." She smiled. Tony smiled back.

"Ok, I'll show you where your room is then."

They walked out into the corridor and then into the elevator. "This floor is Steve and Thor's, the next floor is yours and Natasha and Clint's and the one after that is mine and Bruce's." Tony pointed to the different buttons for the levels.

The elevator arrived at her floor and Katie got out. "You have access to pretty much every floor of the building and some parts of JARVIS. Your room is the one at the end." Tony said.

"Ok."

"Sleep well." He said as the elevator doors began to close.

"You too." She replied just before the doors closed completely.

She stood staring at the doors for several moments before she sighed and walked into her room.

It was painted a light aqua blue colour with a queen-sized bed against the wall. The entire right hand wall was a window and on the left were a desk and a door leading to an en suite and another leading to a walk in wardrobe. There were several shelves for books and ornaments and a television against the wall.

Everything about Tony and his building was all very impressive.

Even her bags had been moved into the room and placed in the corner.

Katie stared at the bags. She didn't know whether to unpack them or to just leave them there. She sighed and decided on the latter.

She hadn't unpacked her bags in 4 years. She wasn't about to start now.

At least, that's what she told herself. In reality, she had gotten too used to moving round. She was used to moving round every few weeks. She carried her life around in her van and had pretty much lived in it for the entirety.

She got changed into a baggy tee shirt she used as a pyjama top and got into bed. But it wasn't a calm sleep. Her dreams were plagued with the memories; the ones she had tried so hard to forget: the ones that had been halted by the alcohol and the constant regimes and rules and structures. They were making a comeback with hideous ferocity and haunting her mind.

She knew returning to SHIELD was a bad idea.

_**Ok, so I hope that the, few, people that are actually reading my story are enjoying it so far. Still open to 'constructive criticism' if anyone feels like leaving comments. OH! Also, I forgot to leave disclaimers and copyright. **_

_**I most definitely do NOT own any of the Avengers (even though I would like to own Tony Stark) they belong to Marvel. But I DO own Katie Rover, her past, her fate and her enemies. **_

_**And BTW, I've tried to research as much as I can but if I get facts about America and its systems wrong, I cannot apologise enough and you'll just have to forgive me. I am British (as you can probably tell by my spelling of 'colour') and the British system is different. I have tried to use get things as accurate as possible.**_

_**Thanks guys.**_


	3. Chapter 3- Starting Again

_**Chapter 3. I'm actually pretty chuffed that I've got this far. I'm trying to think of how to develop Tony and Katie so that they get closer. Anyway, here it is. try to have fun reading it because I'm not sure if this has dragged out a little bit. Katie's past will start to be revealed in the next chapter so please persevere because I'm trying to. Thanks!**_

Katie rover woke up with a deep gasp of air. Her chest was heaving and her forehead was covered in sweat. It was early in the morning; 5:30 to be exact. But she was used to it.

She got changed into a pair of shorts and a skin tight tee shirt and pulled on a pair of trainers. She quickly wrestled her hair into a bobble and then walked out into the corridor. She got into the elevator and pressed the 5th floor button.

She walked into the 5th floor kitchen and stopped. She had only aimed to fill up a water bottle for her run but had gotten something a lot better.

Tony was making himself some cereal . . . Topless.

He was in another pair of Levi jeans but these were darker and his hair was scruffy.

Katie thought about possibly just going to another kitchen but it was too late. Tony had turned around.

He stopped momentarily; seemingly shocked that she was there. She expected some sort of embarrassed laugh which she'd return but she didn't get it. "so as well as being mechanically minded, you're an early riser too?"

Katie smiled slightly. "apparently so."

He chuckled and pointed his spoon at her. "I'm beginning to like you miss rover."

Katie blushed and looked down. There was silence for a moment after that. She looked up. "I just came here to fill up my water bottle." She shook her empty bottle.

"ah," he moved to the side as she walked to the water dispenser. "so you run?"

"yeah, you wanna join me?"

"ah, no thanks. Maybe another time." he said. Katie nodded and screwed the lid back onto her bottle before she started to walk away. "hey," Tony called after her. "do you know your way back."

"Tony," she addressed, unimpressed. "It's pretty hard not to see a massive tower with a big capital 'A' on the top."

Tony shrugged. "still, will you be alright?"

She smiled caringly. "I'll be fine, I'm Irish. Thanks for the concern."

She walked away before Tony could say anything else.

She pushed the ear phones into her ears and blasted the alternative rock music through them. She jogged out of the building and then ran through the practically empty streets of the city. Eventually she came to the 2 mile long stretch of beach.

Katie watched as the waves rippled onto the shore. The sun was still low in the sky and it reflected off of the water. There were a few other people running along the beach with friends or dogs. These were the early working people who needed to get up early to fit their health routine in before they left for work.

It was easy for her to run the beach. It was one of her _advancements_. She could slow down her heartbeat so the right amount of oxygen was fed to her muscles. She could run long distances at a fast pace. However, she had to look ordinary so she had run at a normal pace for someone who was running four miles.

It took her a little less than an hour for her to reach the point where the sand turned to rocks.

Unlike a normal person, Katie's muscles weren't burning and her heart wasn't beating fast. She pulled the water bottle from the holder round her waist and took several big gulps. She replaced the bottle and began running back.

She enjoyed pushing herself. Forcing herself to reach her limits but she would look abnormal if she did it in public.

It was 6:15 by the time she made it to the main paths and it was half past when she made it back to the tower.

Katie pulled her headphones out and took a deep breath before getting in the elevator and going up to her room. She jumped in the shower and, when she was finished, pulled on a pair of jeans and a 'flogging molly' tee shirt with the words 'we find ourselves in the same old mess, singing drunken lullabies' on the back.

She towel dried her hair, because it would go twice as curly if she hair dried it, and went to the living level, as Tony had called it.

Speaking of, a fully dressed Tony was sitting on the sofa with a small device in his hand and a screwdriver in the other.

The living level was an entire level surrounded by a glass window. There was a small kitchen area and a bar and the whole floor was designed to be just like a really big living room.

Katie walked over to Tony and sat down next to him. she looked at the bandage on her left hand and thought of how many days it had been. 3. She began unwrapping the cloth. Tony looked curiously over to what she was doing. "what happened there?"

Katie hadn't even realised he was looking, she smiled. "Got into a bit of a scrap?"

"over what?"

She sighed and shrugged. "probably something petty. Comes compulsory when you're Irish."

Tony smiled as she finished unwrapping the make-do bandage. There were small thin scars covering her knuckles. He suddenly realised that they were all over her other hand too. "Jesus! How many scraps do you get in?" he grabbed her hand to look at them closer and she jumped at the contact.

Once she had calmed down she smiled. "like I said, Irish."

Tony scoffed and let go of her hand. "and people complain about stereotypes."

"no, we complain about _untrue_ stereotypes and grouped names like 'paddy' when said in a negative way." Katie smiled.

Tony smiled back and looked back down to his project. He seemed to be having quite a bit of trouble with the device in his hands so Katie looked over and saw what he problem was. She grabbed the device and pushed a wire into place. "now try." She told him.

He pushed a small square of metal into place with the screwdriver and the device powered up. He looked at her impressed and slightly confused. "how did you know that?"

She smiled and tapped her temple.

Tony chuckled and placed the device down.

"so what is that?" Katie asked.

"oh, so there is something you don't know."

"apparently so."

Tony sighed. "It's a back up." He thought of how to describe it. "When I use the iron man suit, the arc reactor looses power. As I add more and more things to the suit, the reactors last less and less. This," he pointed to the object he had just place down. "Should be a portable backup supply, a bit like a charger that's not connected to the mains."

"ah, I get it. did you sort out the saving time?"

Tony looked slightly confused. "saving time?"

"yeah," Katie picked up the backup supply. "you know how when you turn off a mobile phone, it still looses battery?"

"yeah."

"well, it works the same. If you change this," She gently pulled off the back and looked inside. "and flick that into this position." She showed him how with the screwdriver. "then it won't last forever but It'll get pretty close to it, unlike a mobile phone."

Tony nodded his understanding. "talking about mobile phones," he moved so he could access his pocket. "SHIELD had issued you with this." He pulled out a touch screen phone. "it _was _a basic phone but I made some changes to make it better and put everyone's numbers in it."

Katie gently took the phone and looked it over. "I've not had a phone in almost 5 years and it definitely wasn't a touch screen. You're going to have to give me a crash course."

Tony smiled. He went to take the phone to show her how it worked but they were interrupted. "Good morning." Natasha said as she yawned and ran her hand through her hair.

Katie and Tony jumped when they heard the voice and moved away from each other as they suddenly realised how close they had been sitting.

Natasha didn't notice and just walked into the kitchen area. Katie and Tony smiled at each other. "I'll give you the run through later." Tony said as another Avenger walked in. This time it was Clint. He was dressed in a vest and a pair of jeans with a pair of black vans on his feet. "morning." He addressed the two.

"Morning Clint." Katie said. She turned to Tony. "I'm going to grab some breakfast."

"ok." Tony replied. Katie stood up and joined the agents in the kitchen. She made some toast and a cup of tea and drank it while created idle chat conversations. Steve, Bruce and Thor came and went and before they realised, it was time to leave

. . . . . . .

It was a cloudy day; cold and slightly windy too. Tony Stark had pushed his car as fast as he could on the way to high school, not because he was late but because he wanted to have at least 10 minutes of talking to Bruce before they were forced into lessons.

Tony scanned the car park of the high school and soon spotted the light blue and white Ducati motorbike near the far corner. He revved the engine and smiled as people turned and gawked at his Audi and their mouths opened wider as they realised who was driving.

He parked up with his friend to his left. Bruce looked up from the notepad in his hands. Tony opened the door and flung his legs out but stayed inside. "Hey, Tony?" Bruce asked.

"Yeah?"

"Is this how it works?" Bruce showed Tony a diagram of the arc reactor in Tony's chest. He had been hell bent on figuring it out since Tony had shown him it at least 2 weeks before.

Tony looked over it. "Close . . . but no." Bruce groaned and flipped the page over to start anew. Tony just smirked at his friend. "what lessons have we got today?" Tony asked as he looked around at the people staring at the odd friends.

Bruce ignored him for a minute. "how should I know?"he was trying to draw a diagram and tell Tony the lessons at the same time until he gave up. He looked up at Tony. "I haven't the slightest idea."

"thank you for your wonderful polite answer" Tony said sarcastically.

Bruce rolled his eyes and pushed the notepad into his coat pocket. "like you can talk! Where do you think the others are?" he looked around.

"don't know, Clint and Natasha are probably skulking round on the roof somewhere, Steve has most likely been distracted with a confusing device of the 'new times' and Thor is probably buying the entire contents of a corner store."

"how much do you wanna bet that at least one thing you just said is wrong?"

"30 bucks. But I was exaggerating with Thor, as long as he visited a corner store, it counts."

"I've got 25."

"that'll do. We ask the gang at lunch, deal?"

"deal. No corruption?"

"who do you think I am?" Tony asked, offended. Bruce just gave him a _you-know-you-were-thinking-about-buying-Thor-some-food-to-keep-him-quiet_ look. "fine, no corruption."

The boys had been so immersed in their betting that they hadn't seen or heard the new motorbike pulling up behind them. "hey Bruce." They both heard her Irish accent and looked up. Katie was sitting on her bike in the leathers that fitted her perfectly, Tony gained the idea that she didn't wear them just for safety. "the rest of the parking spaces are taken, can I half yours."

Bruce shrugged. "yeah, sure."

Katie had a very nice motorbike. It was black and dark, burgundy red Yamaha with a modified engine which Tony had no doubt had been customised by Katie herself. She parked it up and cut the engine.

The air seemed really quiet without the sound of the engine. Katie stood up and unzipped her leathers.

"we've got a bet," Bruce said. "Tony thinks that Steve has been distracted by an object of the 'new times', than Natasha and Clint are on the roof and that Thor has stopped as a corner store. I think that at least one of them will be wrong. You want in?"

Katie though and in typical Irish fashion answered a question with another question. "what's the wager?"

"25." Tony answered.

Katie thought for another second. "I'm in. I'm on Tony's side."

"yes." Tony expressed his happiness at Katie being on his side.

"Who holds the money?" she asked.

"Whoever doesn't bet." Bruce said.

"Steve." Tony and Katie said at the same time. They looked up at each other and smiled.

Bruce looked at the two. "ok, that was more than a little weird."

Tony was about to answerback but the bell rang for the beginning of the day.

The three sighed. Katie pulled a thick chain from under the seat and looped it into her back tyre. She still had the motorbike leathers hanging from her hips.

The three went to the student reception and met Natasha, Clint, Steve and Thor as they received their timetables. They were told that the head teacher wanted to speak to them and they were required to show up immediately.

The group did so and waited outside his office. There were 3 chairs and seven people to sit down. Steve, Thor and Natasha took them. Clint sat on the arm of Natasha's chair and Tony and Bruce stood next to each other while Katie, much to the secretary's annoyance, lent on the secretary's desk.

Tony looked over to Bruce who was scribbling an equation onto a sheet in his notepad. "That's wrong." Tony said and crossed his arms over his chest.

Bruce looked at him unimpressed. "you've barely even looked at it." he accused.

"trust me, it's wrong." Tony said showing no emotion.

Katie cocked an eyebrow. "Show it to me." she said to Bruce who showed her. Katie skimmed her eyes over it. "yeah it's wrong. You've got the property of 'AB' wrong. You need to rethink the 3rd step."

Katie leant back onto the desk. Bruce smiled and went back to his equation.

The door to their right opened and the headmaster stood there. Mr. Lewin was his name; he was a balding man but made up for it with a thick moustache. He was at over 45 and his chest was out of proportion to the rest of his body. All of these made him nonetheless threatening. He had a stern face with frown lines over his forehead. There was something out of place on his but Katie couldn't quite figure it out.

Mr. Lewin moved aside and the group made their way inside. His office was large with a desk at the far end. There were shelves of books and a several big filing cabinets. There were pictures of each year of students on the walls. Katie was sceptical. It was a convincing facade of kindness and caring but this man was strict and harsh. But that still didn't calm the feeling that Katie had that he was hiding something. She wasn't too bothered; she'd be able to figure it out soon.

The group of 7 stood opposite the desk while Mr. Lewin stood behind it. Katie's eyes were darting around the room, trying to understand what was out of place. Natasha nudged her and Katie jumped slightly. "relax, what are you looking for?" Natasha whispered.

"I don't know." Katie said quietly back.

Mr. Lewin started speaking in a deep loud voice. "I just wanted to welcome you to our school." He had a strangely posh American accent. He spoke with precision and pronounced each letter with a strange clearness. "I hope that you get on well and I pray that your true personalities will develop and flourish at our fine school." He had his hands folded neatly behind his back and he almost reminded Katie of director Fury. "there will be plenty of opportunities to show your brainpower, everything you do here will be assessed and will go towards your end of year grade. Unfortunately, since you started half way through the year, you will have to work twice as hard and will be specifically scrutinised. I'm sure this won't be a problem though." Nobody reacted to what he had said. he nodded, taking their silence as a confirmation. "you may leave."

The group took a small sigh of relief and began walking out.

"Ah, Mr. Stark and Miss Rover, could you stay for a moment please." Mr. Lewin hadn't said it as a question.

Tony and Katie looked over at each other and stopped walking. The rest of the group looked at them expectantly. "we'll see you in a minute." Tony said and Katie nodded.

They closed the door on their friends and walked back into the office.

"Pull up a chair you two." Mr. Lewin said as he sat down on his own desk chair.

Tony and Katie looked almost cautiously at each other but did as the principal had said and each grabbed a cushioned chair from the side of the room.

They sat down and watched as Mr. Lewin pulled out two files and placed them neatly in front of him. "now, you two. I've needed to keep you behind to talk to you about a few reasons. Mr. Stark, we'll start with you." He opened the file. "there are many things that will be changing now that you're at a public school. People will recognise you, that won't change, but we must ask you to avoid paparazzi as much as you can because it may disturb the relaxed atmosphere of our school and students may be put off. Also, you have a reputation for bad behaviour and disobeying rules. That will not be tolerated."

By this point, Tony had relaxed in the chair and wasn't really listening.

"and Miss Rover, we don't really have much information on you but we do have a few pieces of information. We know that your levels from the last time you went to school were very impressive. However, your records show that you have been involved in several fights while you have been over in America. Most of the people you fought with came out battered and bruised and said that you started it."

Katie scoffed. Mr. Lewin looked at her, shocked and slightly annoyed at how she found her fights funny. "ok, because the people who offended where I came from and who I was definitely didn't start the fight."

"did you place the first slap?"

Katie looked, wide eyed at him. "No, I threw the first punch." She smiled and Tony had to hide his smiled behind his hand.

"then you started the fights."

Katie smiled. "ok, but I wasn't the provoker." Katie and Mr. Lewin were now staring at each other, a stare-off that Katie was hell bent on winning.

Mr. Lewin broke first. Katie smiled and relaxed in her chair.

"anyway, being a student from another nationality, it may be harder to fit in but I'm sure you won't have any problem." He said with sarcasm just audible in his voice.

Katie squinted her eyes. There was definitely something strange about this head master. For such a big and intimidating man, he had made two mistakes that had got Katie's brain working. 1) he had accepted her comeback about her not being the provoker and 2) he had used sarcasm and his tone almost sounded threatening. Surely a head teacher would never do that, especially to a new student.

"you may leave." Mr. Lewin said slowly and in an intimidating voice just as the school bell rang.

Tony and Katie go up from the chairs and left the office. Katie sighed and turned to Tony. "I think we did quite well in there." She said.

"definitely agreed." They started walking to their first lesson but Katie stopped and turned around to the students in the corridor. She felt weird. "Katie?" Tony said from behind her. "Katie are you alright?" he asked.

Katie couldn't shake the feeling. Tony gently touched her shoulder and she spun around. "um, yeah." She lied.

It was a feeling she hadn't had in a long time and a feeling she tried desperately to get rid of.

_**Ok, so. Chapter 3! I'm pretty happy with all the people that have followed this story. Yes, all of the Avengers (Tony, Thor, Natasha, Clint, Steve, Bruce and Katie) are teenagers. (around 17 or 18) Fury and other agents are younger than in the film but not teenagers (obviously)**_

_**The followers and favourite-ers are what's keeping me going at the moment. Feel free to review with questions, 'constructive criticism' or just simply reviews.**_

_**Keep it going. Really enjoying this. Tell me if it's getting boring or if it's dragging out.**_


	4. Chapter 4- No Intentions

_**Here's chapter 4. Thank you to everyone who has followed and favourited this story. It makes me so excited to check my emails in the morning and at night just to see if anyone new is enjoying my story. I am, however, jetting off to Lanzarote on Tuesday. I will keep writing while on holiday but I will try to upload chapter 5 before I leave although I can't make any promises. Hope you're enjoying it so far. Here it is . . . chapter 4.**_

"Miss Rover!" the teacher shouted and Katie was suddenly pulled out of her thoughts by the English teacher shouting. Katie looked up to Mrs. Newman who sighed. "Katie, could you please read out page 17 of our book."

It was nearly the end of the 4th lesson, it was lunch next, and the class had just begun reading _'The Hound of Baskervilles'_. Katie looked the teacher up and down before sighing and picking up the book in front of her and reading.

Tony had been watching her for most of the lesson. Katie was hung up on something; he could tell. It was either something to do with the head teacher or something to do with whatever she had felt in the corridor. Any which way, something was bothering her.

As Tony sneakily watched her read it suddenly became apparent that Katie wasn't actually reading. Her eyes were moving but she was speaking like she knew the tones that people were using and she never made one mistake. He leant over to Bruce, who was sitting next to him following Katie's reading in his own book. He nudged him and gestured towards Katie.

Bruce rolled him eyes but looked nonetheless. He watched her for a minute before he too realised something was wrong with the way she was reading. Bruce looked quickly back to Tony and mouthed '_is she reciting the book?'_

'_I think so.' _He mouthed back. The two looked around the class and smiled. No one else was looking; Katie was actually going to get away with it. By this point, Natasha and Clint had noticed what Bruce and Tony were making a fuss about and they were shaking their heads at disbelief at her nerves.

When Katie was finished she looked up. She saw the four staring at her. She just looked innocently and mouthed _'what?'_ they all just shook their heads with a smile and looked down at their books.

Mrs. Newman asked another student to read and Katie relaxed in her chair again. Tony snuck another look just as Katie looked up to him, their eyes met and locked. Neither of them breathed for what felt like minutes.

Katie's eyes were so blue; such a fantastic, bright shade of blue. Tony was captivated. He had never seen such amazing eyes. (And he had stared into _a lot_ of eyes)

Katie swallowed and looked away. A few seconds later, the bell rang.

The avengers made their way towards the cafeteria and sat at a table in the corner. Clint and Katie went up to buy some dinner.

"So what was that about?" Clint asked as he looked at the contents of a sandwich.

Katie didn't realise that he was talking to her until nobody answered him. She quickly looked up. "I'm sorry, what?"

Clint groaned. "Back in English, how did you do that with the book?"

Katie smirked. "I have a _very _good memory." She picked up a Ham-Salad sandwich and placed it on the tray.

"Yeah well I know _that_. But I didn't think it was possible to memorise every page of a Sherlock Holmes novel." He said quietly so nobody else heard.

"Well say 'hello' to the impossible because it's not just Sherlock Holmes. It's every book I've ever read."

Clint's jaw dropped with disbelief. "H . . . h . . . how the hell?" he managed to splutter out.

Katie smiled. "My skills improved on my years off."

"Obviously, but why?"

"My life began depending on remembering things."

"Your _life_?"

Katie shrugged. "I'll tell you about it at some point." She paid the woman at the end of the line and walked back to the table with Clint following close behind.

The other avengers were all sat round the table with their hot meals in cardboard trays. Clint and Katie sat down. Natasha looked over to Clint and suddenly became concerned. "Barton? What's the matter?"

Katie looked over to Clint and almost chocked on her sandwich. Clint had a baffled and astonished look on his face. "What?" Natasha asked Katie who went to explain but Clint cut her off.

"She can recite every book she's ever read." He said in an almost accusing tone. The avengers all looked straight to Katie who swallowed the sandwich she had almost chocked on and rolled her eyes. "Alice in Wonderland, chapter 7, page 90. _'The hatter opened his eyes very wide but all he _said _was "why is a Raven like a writing desk?"' _Black Beauty, chapter 16, page 73. _'The horses being go out of other stables and the carriages and gigs being pulled out of houses and sheds lest the flames should spread further.' _Would you like me to quote a third?" she asked.

The group were all gawking at her. "That's fantastic." Steve said with a smile.

"It's impossible." Bruce corrected. "How in earth did you manage that?"

"It's one of my advancements. It started become really important that I could remember things a few years ago. I was depending on myself and my own skills and I began remembering little passages of text and then, eventually, whole books because if I couldn't remember something then it could have meant the difference between life and death."

"You never told us about that," Tony said. He was sat relaxed in his chair with his phone in his hand. "About your past and how you got here."

"um . . ." Katie scratched the back of her neck so she had an excuse to look away just in case anyone could see in her eyes that she was nervous about talking about it. "It's not really a subject to discus in a public area."

Nobody noticed her little nervous moment, well, no one except Tony. Katie looked up to Natasha who was giving her an _they're-going-to-find-out-anyway-so-I-don't-see-why-you're-trying-to-hide-it-from-them-because-they're-very-good-at-finding-out-information _look.

Katie just looked away and then looked back up again but this time her eyes met Tony's, who had been looking at her since he asked the question, he gave her a reassuring look. Katie smiled and looked away and began eating her sandwich.

Tony sighed and put away his phone. "So what were you guys doing this morning?" he asked.

All of the Avengers looked up at him confused. "Why?" Clint asked.

"Does it matter? I'm trying to make conversation."

"I was purchasing a multipack of walkers prawn of cocktail crisps and a packet of hobnobs of biscuits." Katie looked up to Tony who both looked at Bruce.

"What about you Agents?" Tony asked Natasha and Clint.

They were still looking confused but they answered. "We were on the roof."

"Steve?"

"I was in the library."

Tony and Katie slumped and groaned and Bruce smiled and laughed. "Pay up!" he said and placed a hand towards each of them.

Tony and Katie each pulled out their $25 and handed them to Bruce, who willingly took them and began counting.

"Explain!" Clint said sternly.

Katie sighed. "Tony, Bruce and I had a bet about where you were this morning, Tony made a prediction and Bruce said that at least one of them would be wrong. I took Tony's side. His prediction was that Thor would be eating food, Natasha and Clint would be on the roof," she turned to Tony. "Which was quite a good prediction by the way," Tony nodded. "And that Steve would be distracted by something of this day and age. Sadly, Steve was in the library so Tony and I lost."

The team seemed to simultaneously roll their eyes, except for Natasha who just stood up. "We're moving." She announced to the table. Katie, Tony and Bruce looked at her like they'd done something wrong.

"Why?" Steve asked.

"Because there's a group of girls to my left, all I can hear is their bitching and whining and giggling; it's driving me crazy."

"Well anything that can crack Natasha must be pretty annoying." Katie said.

"Seriously, just listen." She told them.

The group and listened to see if they could hear anything.

There was nothing for a few moments until there was a sudden eruption of stereotypical teenage girls' laughter. It was a horrible, high pitched noise that made all the Avengers cringe.

"Yup, let's go." They said in chorus as they pulled out their bags out and packed up their lunches.

As the group of 7 walked out of the cafeteria and started their search for a place to sit, the boys walked in front while Natasha and Katie linked arms behind.

"So what's the deal with you and Tony?" Natasha said quietly. In typical Irish manner, Katie replied to a question with another question.

"Why haven't you kissed Clint yet?"

Natasha just stared at Katie and squinted as she tried to think of a way around their current dilemma. "You first." She decided to say.

Katie sighed and thought for a moment. "I don't know it's just . . . I just . . . I know that he's different around me than he is with other people. And he just . . . I can't even put it into words. But have you _seen _his a_rse_?!"

Natasha and Katie looked at each other and then burst out laughing. The boys turned round and Katie lent over to Natasha. "This side ain't too bad either." She said and they laughed more. Tony and Clint looked at them confused while Thor, Bruce and Steve looked at them like they were expecting them to explain. Natasha and Katie gasped in air and the boys rolled their eyes and turned back around. "I don't know if I was laughing at the way you said arse or if I was just surprised by what you said." they laughed a little more and then calmed down.

Katie and Natasha began walking again. "Your turn." She said. "Talk about Clint."

"What do you want me to say?"

"c'mon, I see you two together, it's obvious. Well, to me it is anyway."

"Well . . . I'm confused."

"How so?"

Natasha sighed. "When I was back in Russia, it was drilled into me that love didn't exist; that it was a trick of the mind and yet Clint . . ." she bit her lip and thought for a minute. "He's made me think differently."

Katie smiled. "Aww, I'm so glad that someone cares about you."

Natasha looked up and thought. "Katie?"

"Yeah?"

"When was the last time someone cared about _you_?"

Katie's small smile drifted from her face and she looked away, trying to stop herself from thinking about it. "Katie? Answer the question." Natasha said.

"There were my parents and then there was you and Clint, for a little bit, and then there was . . ." she sighed. "Then there was no one."

The boys had found a place and decided to sit down. They sat on the science steps with Bruce, Steve, Tony and Thor were against the left side and Clint, Natasha and Katie against the right.

"Did anybody get the geography homework?" Bruce asked. "It never _was_ my strongest subject."

"Yeah, I got it." Katie replied as she rummaged through her school bag to find her already completed homework. She found it and handed it to Bruce.

"Can I copy the ones I'm struggling on?"

"Yeah sure, copy it all."

He began transferring answers. "I take it you 'Googled' these." Bruce said.

"Google!? I haven't _'Googled' _anything in almost 6 years."

"Then how did you know all these answers?"

Katie scoffed. "I've been to half of those places."

"What do you mean you've _been _to half these places?" Tony asked as he looked over Bruce's shoulder and looked at the variety of places on the sheet.

"Name a place listed on that sheet." She said.

"Beijing." Bruce said.

"Been there."

"Denmark." Tony said.

"Yup."

"Dubai." Natasha asked.

"You haven't even looked at the sheet, but yeah."

"Prove it." Steve said.

"Ask SHIELD, they funded all my moves."

"Why_ did _you move all the time?" Tony asked, relaxing back against the wall.

"I never stayed anywhere for very long." She replied.

"But why not?"

Katie stopped, swallowed and then looked away. "Umm . . . yet again, not really a subject for public discussion. I'll tell you all just not here."

At that point 4 friends walked past, looked at Katie and stopped. Katie looked up and stared at them blankly. They stared for over a minute and Katie's expression changed to expectant. When they didn't speak she took her opportunity. "Are yous gonna say something or are you just gonna stand there."

Bruce, tony, Natasha, and Clint smiled while Steve and Thor were still trying to figure out what she had said.

"Are you, like, the new girl, Katie?" a blonde girl asked.

"Do you see any other Irish Katie's around here?" the blonde looked at her slightly confused. "yes." Katie sighed. "Why?"

"'cause we heard from max, who heard from Lisa, who heard from Kaz, who heard from Mary-Lou, who heard from the cousin of the best friend of Jason Walter that Jason Walter's got a grudge."

"Who the feck is Jason Walter?"

"He's the guy that you, like, corrected in science."

"Oh, the guy who thought that x-rays were used in Microwaves." Tony and Bruce chuckled at this.

"Yeah, he's after you anyway." The 4 girls walked away.

Katie looked to the group. "Do some people just look for conflict?"

"You should know," Natasha said. "You're Irish."

The group chuckled and Katie shrugged. "I'll give you that on. But it's the first day and someone is already after me." she said.

The school bell rang. "What have we got?" Steve asked.

"PE!" Clint and Natasha said at the same time.

"Well at least somebody was looking forward to it." Tony said and everyone chuckled except for the two agents who just stared at him as the whole group walked down the PE corridor. They were redirected with the other students into the sports hall. There were around 30 people inside when the teachers closed the door.

Katie immediately didn't like the female sports teacher. She introduced herself as Mrs. Maria Lacey, but made it very clear that she would be called Mrs. Lacey and nothing else, and she spoke with a scary precision much like the head teacher. She had a pinched face and was clearly a 'social smoker' because the signs of smoking were there but they weren't as obvious as a regular smoker. She wore old jogging bottoms and a somewhat skinny sports tee shirt. She was around 43 years old and had a horrible-coloured sports drink in her hand.

The male teacher just generally looked nicer. He was tall and around half the age of Mrs. Lacey he was in Nike jogging bottoms with a tee shirt on from a marathon he must have recently ran and a quicksilver zip-up jumper. He spoke with a nicer tone of voice and said he preferred to be called Luke so it didn't matter what his surname was.

Mrs. Lacey stood forward and announced her presence. "If you could please be silent as I read out the names of the people in my group. Both groups are of mixed gender and there will be no negotiating of groups." The avengers all looked at each other hoping that they wouldn't be split up.

Thankfully they weren't.

"Ok," Luke stepped forward. "Just to make sure you've all got the right group, the following people are in my set. Natasha Romanoff, Tony Stark, Tony Stark?" he looked up and searched the class. Tony raised his hand and the teacher stared at him for a moment before he looked back down to the sheet and uttered 'wow' under his breath. "Um . . ." he found his place on the page again. "Clint Barton, Bruce Banner, Katie Rover, Steve Rogers, Thor Odinson . . ." he read out the rest of the class which the avengers ignored; except for one name- Jason Walter. Katie looked around and found him.

He was possibly an inch smaller that her, he was slightly muscular but nowhere near Steve or even Clint. He held himself with an _I'm-the-best_ posture. He had two friends with him. A short, chubby ginger boy and a lanky tall dark grey haired boy. They actually made Jason look good, which Katie suspected was why Jason hung around with them, though she had no doubt that the chubby boy probably had a bit of muscle underneath the flabby stuff.

"Alright then." Mrs. Lacey announced straight after Luke had finished. "Today will be a free lesson as I highly doubt that any of you have been organised enough to bring your PE kits." Katie liked this woman less and less, much like she had done with the head teacher. "You can use the gym on the second level or you may get items out of the store cupboard. We will supervise."

The avengers looked at each other. "Gym," They all said in chorus. They stood up. As all the other students moved to the storeroom, they walked to the door that said '_gym' _in bold letters on a plaque and climbed the stairs.

The gym was situated on a sort of balcony that overlooked the sports hall. There was a variety of exercise equipment; even though they were 25 years old they seemed to be in working condition. Bruce pulled out a notepad while Tony pulled out his phone. Katie joined them and overlooked their work. Thor tried 1 exercise before he decide that the top weight wasn't heavy enough and just remained sat in the seat.

Jason Walter and his two '_followers' _had also chose the gym; predictable. Jason decided to test his upper body strength; also predictable.

Katie sat on the chair of the exercise in front of Tony and Bruce and kept sneaking glances at Jason. Weighing up your opponent you could call it. She noticed that Tony was looking as well.

Jason couldn't even lift half as much as Clint and Tony and Katie chuckled to each other. Natasha had been working on a punching bag a few exercises away but quickly got bored. "C'mon Kats." She said to Katie as she took off her boxing gloves. "I'm curious."

"Of what?" Katie asked almost cautiously.

"Seeing if you improved." She got herself into a somewhat relaxed martial arts position.

Katie pinched her lips as she decided it was worth a try. She stood up and all the boys looked wide eyed that Katie had actually squared up to the highly trained agent. Katie moved side on with her fists clenched in front of her face like she was ready for a bare knuckle fight.

Bruce leaned over to Tony. "I got 5 bucks on Natasha." Tony pursed his lips as he thought about if Katie could beat the super secret, highly professional agent. He decided she could.

"Deal, I got 5 on Katie." They shook on it.

Natasha attacked first, it went to hit Katie's chest but she slapped it away and threw a punch, it hit Natasha's cheek. Everyone's mouths gaped open, even Natasha's, that Katie had actually managed to hit the agent. Natasha squinted and shook her head. "Oh, it's _on_ now '_Irish'_." she said.

"Bring it _'Russia'_."

Natasha pounced forward with a series of punches and even a few martial arts style kicks but only two managed to contact Katie and the rest were efficiently avoided. Katie threw several bare knuckle fight moves at Natasha. They all contacted but weren't hard enough to create bruises. On the pull back of the last punch, Natasha caught her hand and twisted her arm so she was forced to spin round with her back against Natasha's chest.

Natasha's arm wrapped around Katie neck and Katie tied to gasp in some air. "That's it Nat," Steve said. "You win she can breathe."

Natasha didn't move. Katie slammed her foot onto Natasha's and it shocked the agent who groaned. Katie managed to push her arm from around her neck. Natasha tried to step away but Katie spun round and hooked her foot behind Natasha's foot. The agent tumbled to the floor and looked up. Katie eyes were glowing a light purple colour that had wiped out all the blue. Every ones' eyes were flicking from Katie to the agent to Katie again and back.

Katie blinked and the purple began fading back to blue.

"_That_," Clint said. "Was pretty cool."

"You _have_ improved." Natasha said as she picked herself from the floor.

"What did you expect? I travelled round India for 4 months winning fights for money."

The bell rang for the end of lesson. "All right people!" Luke shouted. "That's the end of lesson. Clear up and clear out!"

Within 5 minutes everyone except for the avengers had left the hall. Natasha and Clint needed to collect a letter about after school clubs, Bruce needed to hand in his _'medical letter' _and just as they were leaving the hall, Steve and Thor were approached by Luke who needed to talk to them about the football club so the gym was completely empty as Tony and Katie went to leave the hall. "So what was the deal with the eyes?" Tony asked.

Katie sighed. "You saw that than."

"It was pretty hard _not_ to see it."

"Um, for some reason my eyes glow for things like high adrenalin."

"Ah." Tony threw his arm over Katie's shoulders.

"Whoa!" Katie brushed his arm off. "Slow down there Playboy." She turned to face him.

"And why should I _slow down_?" he grabbed her hands and Katie looked down at his hands caressing her own. "You just beat up and agent in a public place, I don't think _I _need to _slow down_."

"Yes but I didn't beat Natasha up to get into her pants. You put your arm round me to flirt which means _you_ were trying to get into _my _pants."

"Who said I was trying to get into your pants?" he put on a flirty smiled.

"Please, are there anyone's pants you _aren't_ trying to get into?"

"Mrs. Lacey." He gazed off into the distance. "I'm not trying to get into Mrs. Lacey's pants."

"Eww," a look of disgust passed Katie's face. "Can you imagine that?"

"I'm trying not to, why? Are you?"

"Oh yes." Katie said sarcastically. "I imagine you performing sexual acts on women _all_ the time."

"Maybe you shouldn't have to imagine." He said seductively as he lent forward.

Katie leaned back. "You really _do_ live up to your status don't you?"

"I don't know, you tell me."

"Ok, celebrity lifestyle magazine, page 17, paragraph 9, lines 2 to 8. _'Despite Mr. Stark's celebrity lifestyle, he actively lives up to his playboy status. His money provides him with the best possessions, his connections with the authority's stops his '_mishaps_' from being dealt with properly and his superhero alter ego gives him a role model look.'_ Now playboy, you make me think that a silly gossip magazine id right."

"How so?"

"You can really ignore the gossip don't you?"

Tony shrugged. "Grow up with it, learn to live with it."

Katie smiled and looked down to the floor and suddenly found that their hands were still together and then realised that she had no intention of letting go.

_**This chapter's just a little bit longer. I thought I'd make it up to you because I may not get a chance to upload chapter 5 before I got to Lanzarote for a week.**_

_**Just a note. If there are any Robert Downey Jr. fans as obsessed as me that haven't seen a film called 'kiss kiss bang bang' the watch it. Right now. Or even just the clips on the internet. I watched the clips last Sunday, watched the film on Monday and bought it on my iPod on Tuesday. It took 3 days to fall in love with it. Such a good film and so funny. Would recommend it to anybody and everybody. **_

_**Still don't own any of the Avengers. They are property of Marvel. Katie Rover, her past, her present, her future and her enemies do belong to me though.**_


	5. Chapter 5- Answers

_**This is chapter 5. Just wanted to say thanks to Frenchie121. I've read and favourited and followed almost all of your stories. I actually love your characters. I really love Tommy Stark and have been writing crappy little ideas about Tony Stark's daughter since I began writing Iron man and Avengers stories. I might post one when I get this one done. **_

_**Anyway, now that you've all read my little post about Frenchie121, you can all read my next chapter. Enjoy. XD**_

_**(Katie Rover, her past, her present, her future and her enemies all belong to me but none of the avengers do. Might just add a little copyright about Katie though. SHE'S MINE!)**_

Tony Stark sat next to Katie with her phone in his hand. They were on the sofa in the 'living level' The rest of the avengers were elsewhere in the tower except for Natasha and Clint who were out getting the food.

"I take it that you know about Wi-Fi and 3G networks?" Tony asked.

"Yeah, I read a book."

Tony rolled his eyes. "Of course you did. Well, my systems will hack any locked Wi-Fi connection and when there's no internet, you can get it from Stark tower which is set as the default connection."

"Ok." Katie nodded her understanding.

"Now this," he shocked her on the screen. "Pulls up the menu screen with notes and calendars and messages and things like that."

"Oh nice."

"Sir?" JARVIS' voice came from the ceiling. "Agent Barton and agent Romanoff have returned to the building and are on their way up."

Katie looked at awe at the ceiling.

"Thanks JARV tell the others." Tony said completely relaxed by the presence of the AI.

"I swear, that is really amazing." Katie said and Tony looked over to her with a smile before he stood up and headed towards the kitchen. He pulled out dome plates and placed them on the marble island in the middle of the large room. "Pull up that stool." He said and pointed into the corner.

Katie grabbed the stool just as Natasha and Clint walked into the kitchen. "We got Chinese food!" they announced as they held up the bags they held and Tony and Katie smiled.

They placed the bags on the island and began taking the lids off of the plastic containers. Katie grabbed some cutlery and placed it next to the plates as Bruce walked into the room closely followed by Thor and then Steve.

They sat down and began piling food onto their plate. Katie sighed. "It's been at least 3 years since I had Chinese food."

"2 years?!" Natasha said. "How on earth did you survive?"

Katie shrugged. "I was probably preoccupied." She looked up the Bruce. "Did you manage to finish the geography homework?"

Bruce looked up. "Oh, yeah. There were only a few questions I was struggling on."

There was silence for a moment. "Why _did _you move around so much?" Tony asked. Katie looked up and met Tony's gaze. She stared blankly at him for a moment with her usual posture and then glanced around at the rest of the table and slumped. Everyone, except for Clint and Natasha, was looking at her expectantly.

"You aren't going to let this slide are you?" she asked and they replied in chorus.

"Nope."

Katie slumped impossibly farther. "Fine. I'll tell yous the basics." She sucked on her bottom lip for a moment. When she'd figure out how to phrase it she sat up. "When I was younger, I and my 2 friends, Sarah and Dermot, used to go around old houses and steel valuables to then sell on. When I was 10 we broke into the derelict Alwin house. We ransacked the house of everything we could find but Sarah nor Dermot wanted to go into the basement. Looking back now, it was a little strange but at the time I thought nothing of it. When I got down, there was a music box with a large clear, polished stone. When I picked it up it started to heat up and glow. That stone gave me the _advancements_."

The avengers were all staring at her. Katie took a breath and thought for a second.

"What happened to the stone?" Steve asked.

"I still have it.

Natasha hadn't looked up for the whole explanation. "Tell them why you still have it Katie." She said and looked up. She would never chose to hear Katie's life story again because there was a part where her own and Katie's became entwined.

Katie looked over to the agent and they stared at each other for a moment before Katie looked down and took a deep breath. "When the lights cleared, my hand was burnt but it was healing. I tried to get to Sarah and Dermot and tell them that we needed to get out of the house but 5 men came to take me away. Sarah and Dermot were unconscious at the top of the stairs. I still have the stone because for about 2 months before the Alwin incident, I was being followed. Everything I was doing was being assessed, every word I spoke was being documented, every place I went was being marked. Sarah and Dermot were threatened and blackmailed not to say anything. They were forced to take me to the Alwin house and make sure I went into the basement alone and find the stone. The group called themselves the Testers. They were led by a man called Damien Slater. He had 2 assistants; his son, Lewis Slater, and Lewis' best friend, Connor Murphy. They were both as old as me. I was tortured and provoked for over a month. In the last week I was there I found out that there were other people being tortured. They were killed when they were no longer needed. I knew that there would be other people after me so I escaped and took the stone with me."

"Tell them what happened." Natasha said.

"I'm trusting you Natasha." She said and the others became confused but soon forgot when Katie sighed and continued. "What the Testers did last was what pushed me over the edge. It had been 2 weeks since they had discovered anything new. They took the last resort and . . ." Katie swallowed. ". . . Tortured and killed my parents in front of me." Katie looked down at the floor and the other avengers, except for Clint and Natasha, looked at her, shocked.

After a moment, Tony spoke. "What happened then?" Katie looked up and wondered if he actually wanted to know or if he was just asking for the sake of it. She ran his tone-of-speaking through her head several times and finally realised that he genuinely wanted to know.

"Um," she swallowed. "I was angry, obviously, and managed to get out of the shackles that chained me to the wall. I killed the 2 men that had killed my parents and another that had hurt me. I was captured again and personally tortured by Damien. I heard them talking about the next person they were going to Test and I knew that I had to stop them. I escaped a few days later and managed to get the stone before I disappeared. I killed Damien, Lewis and Connor as I left."

Steve looked up. "You did all of this when you were 10?"

Katie smiled sadly. "Yeah."

"Where does SHIELD get involved? Because you knew Clint and Natasha before you came here the other day."

"This is where it starts to look up . . . slightly. I went home to grab everything I thought I needed then went on the run. It took 2 days for Clint to find me and I think it's fair to say that I was in a bit of a state. I had to be sedated for him to get me on the helicopter and back to SHIELD. I was isolated from everyone except for Phil Coulson, Fury, Maria Hill and Natasha."

"Why weren't you isolated from Natasha?" Steve asked.

Katie smiled and chuckled slightly. "Because she was in the cell opposite me." she smiled at Natasha who smiled back. "I was . . . interrogated, for lack of a better word, about my escape and what had happened. I was treated as a threat more than an ally. I was kept in a cell with my own thoughts for 2 weeks before I started training; just with agent Coulson first, and then I would spend all day in the training rooms with him or Fury checking on my every now and again. Then Natasha started training and we would train together. I was monitored 24/7 and was there for 4 years before I left."

"Where did you go?" Bruce asked.

"I went to Spain first. Spent time in a small village, learnt the language within 2 weeks and then went farther afield."

"You still haven't said _why_." Tony said.

"Oh yeah," Katie sat up. "Well one month I spent a little bit too long in one place and the remaining Testers found me. But they underestimated me and I managed to get away but they warned me that if they got the right chance they would kill me. If I can't work well with SHIELD and they can't hide my identity then the group will come after me."

"Then why did you help us?" Steve said.

"I promised Fury that I'd return when I was needed."

"That can't be the only reason." Bruce stated.

"Believe me, it's not. I didn't have to come in but I've been running for almost 5 years. It was going to kill me eventually. I also couldn't let my own selfishness be hurting other people." the group were listening intently. "Do you trust me now?" Katie asked.

Steve stood up. "Katie Rover," she looked up; wondering if Steve was going to say something terrible. "I would like to officially welcome you to the avengers." Katie stood up and shook his outstretched hand.

"Mr. Stark." JARVIS said. "Director Fury is asking that you all make your way to SHIELD HQ. He has some important information for the avengers."

"Thanks JARV." Tony sighed and stood up. "Looks like we're heading out."

The team cleared up and headed to the garage. Katie didn't bother with the leathers, just the helmet. Tony's tyres squealed as he sped off. Everyone just rolled their eyes and shook their heads but Katie saw this as a challenge. She started her bike and sped off after him.

Natasha sighed. "Jesus Christ." She said and looked over to Clint. "Tony Stark is going to be the death of her."

"Agreed." Clint said as he opened the car door. "But it's better than the Testers catching and killing her." Natasha shrugged and they both got into the car.

She knew that Clint was right but she also knew that Tony was not a very good person for Katie to get close to. Granted, she loved that Katie could connect with Tony and she loved that someone possibly cared about her back but Tony'd had his way with god knows how many girls and Katie, even if it was buried deep down, was vulnerable.

Bruce was sat in Tony's Audi with his _science-bro_ next to him. They could hear Katie's motorbike, even over the sound of the pounding hard rock music and Tony looked in the wing mirror as she overtook them.

Tony smiled. "Oh, she's _very _good." He said.

"She overtook you. So what?"

"I sped off, trying to see if she'd notice. I thought she'd missed it."

A few minutes, and several overtakes and re-overtakes later. They all arrived at SHIELD HQ. Tony got out of the car and Katie took her helmet off. They smiled at each other as Clint, Natasha, Steve and Thor arrived. They were greeted by agent Coulson at the doors and Natasha watched as Katie's expression went from happy to suddenly concerned.

"Director Fury would like to see you in meeting room 2. He has some information that you need to know."

The avengers did as they were told and began to walk away. Natasha turned around to see Katie talking to Coulson. "Rover!" she shouted. "You coming?"

Katie and Coulson looked over. "Umm, yeah. I'll be there in a minute." The two looked back to each other and began talking again.

Natasha squinted slightly at the somewhat worried tone. Clint looked to Natasha and patted her on the shoulder to urge her along with the rest of them. Natasha had no choice but to do so.

They walked into the meeting room and Fury turned around from the one-way window facing the city. "Afternoon team." He greeted as everyone sat down. "Take your seats." They did so and Fury sat at the head of the table. "We have found out some more information." He stopped and scanned his eyes across the room. "Where's Katie?"

"She's talking with Coulson." Natasha said with concern.

"Ah good." Fury said which got Natasha, and now Clint, more concerned and confused at why Fury wasn't annoyed that Katie had all but skipped his meeting. Fury crossed his arms over his chest and began talking again. "We managed to find out several more-"

Fury was cut off by the door opening. Katie walked in, apologised and sat down. Fury looked at her expectantly. She looked up and nodded. "He told me." she said.

Natasha sighed inaudibly. Sometimes it made her exasperated at the fact that the girl who had been her best friend since she was 10 was almost as secretive as SHIELD.

"Anyway, we have some new information about the Unforgiven." Everyone started listening. "The ringleaders are Dan Rudd-" Natasha saw Katie's expression suddenly go to concerned.

"Dan Rudd? R-U-D-D?" she asked.

"Yes." Fury replied. Wondering where this conversation was going.

"I'm guessing he has an assistant. What's _his _name?"

"Chris Young."

Katie groaned and rolled her eyes. "You've got their fake identities."

"Excuse me? Fake?"" Fury said.

"Phil Rudd and Malcolm and Angus Young are members of AC/DC."

"So?"

"so, all we know at the minute is that we have 2 people running an extremist group who are quite childish because they decided to change their names to that of members of a hard rock back who are most likely their icons." She spoke with a slightly angry tone but it was only audible to Natasha and Clint who had noticed that something was up with her in the first place

"So what do we do?" Steve asked.

This caught Katie out. "Umm . . ." she scratched her head. "I'm not sure. My mind isn't really in the right place at the moment." It disturbed Natasha that Katie was so distracted. She had no idea what could have affected her so much.

"I have an idea." Tony said and relief flooded over Katie as some pressure was released. "If they're AC/DC fans then we could hack into the tickets systems and search for the similar names. We can face track and compare the SHIELD pictures to the credit card information on the tickets."

Katie thought for a minute. "That could work. But I'll need your help."

They nodded at each other. "We can start running JARVIS when we get back."

Katie smiled. It was at this point that Natasha realised how much of a distraction Tony was to Katie. At the present moment, distractions were a good thing but it worried Natasha that sometime in the near future, distractions could be very bad.

"Anyway," Fury said. "The, hopefully more successful information, is that there have been more posts on the internet. It has been uploaded for 2 hours and had over 100 views. The good thing about the internet is that people may be in support now but when we get to the point where we can take action, most of the people will disappear."

Fury continued talking but Katie wasn't listening anymore. She was sloughed in the chair but she was tensed.

The only thing she heard was. "Meeting dismissed." And she walked through SHIELD with Clint and Natasha next to her. They were talking away but she registered nothing that was said. Coulson's words were on repeat in her mind. _"He's been spotted."_

_**Ok. Chapter 5. I'm so sorry I left you all but you will get 1 or possibly 2 more updates within the next few days. I was writing in my little blue notebook all through my holiday, and got a very good tan on my back because of it, so thank you for your support. I landed on the plane yesterday at past midnight and heard my dad reading out all the football scores they had missed and thought 'TURN 3G ON BECAUSE YOU VE GOT A WEEKS WORTH OF FANFICTION NOTIFICATIONS TO CHECK.' I literally squealed at all the notifications. I loved it. I also got a notification from marvel telling me about the IRON MAN 3 trailer. I had such a geek out and while I was talking to my dad at 100 MPH about it he ordered me tons of Iron Man comic books. I swear that I live in my tee shirt with a glow in the dark arc reactor on the front and my mum won't stop calling me a geek. I love my life ATM just as much as I love the people that are reading and commenting and favourite-ing and following. **_


	6. Chapter 6- Vantage Point

_**Chapter 6. Told you that you would be getting more updates. Sorry if some of yous are studying and things but I won't have to study for quite a few more months now so you should be getting updates. This is a longer chapter to apologise for the kinda short last chapter.**_

Tony had been watching Katie for almost 15 minutes. She fascinated him. He hadn't noticed it before but she had little . . . quirks, for lack of a more accurate word.

For example, he was sitting opposite her on the square table in history. Nobody was sitting next to her and she had one leg outstretched on the spare chair and another pulled into her chest. He could see the first 3 fingers on her left hand moving gently into what seemed to be guitar chords.

He made a mental _note-to-self _to ask her about it.

"Katie," Mrs. Lyn said from the front of the class. Katie looked up. "Can you please tell us the title of the text we are reading?"

"Letter from a soldier. It's from a pilot during world war 2."

The teacher smiled and Katie looked back down in thought, without noticing the teachers smile. "See, Jason." The teacher said and Katie looked up again. "Katie isn't even originally from America and _she _knows what we're talking about."

Tony could tell that Katie didn't know whether to take offence to the statement or just carry on with the stare off that was taking place between her and Jason. She decided on neither and shook her head and looked back to the floor. Tony looked to Jason who was still glaring at the side of Katie's head. Jason turned his attention to Tony and the glare intensified. Tony smiled and waved.

Katie looked up slightly and smirked as Jason _huffed_ and turned away.

Katie was wearing short denim shorts and a black Jack Daniels vest. She wore her usual battered converse on her feet and there was a collection of string bracelets around her ankle. Her hair was cascading in, surprisingly tame, ebony black curls past her shoulders. Her eyes seemed to be more grey than blue.

The quirks weren't the only things that Tony had noticed; her eye colour was another. One time, unlike the present, her eyes would be a light blue and another time they had gone a peculiar deep, electric blue.

He had seen the look that was plastered to Katie's face once before. He had seen it when she was listening to Fury the first time he had met her. So as far as he could tell, she was piecing something together just like she had been when they met.

He had watched her spike her _'Irn Bru' _with whiskey that morning. She had pulled a bottle out of her suitcase and all but filled the entire energy drink bottle up with the alcohol. It was obvious, to him at least, that something was bothering Katie.

Katie suddenly looked up with realisation and plunged her hand into her rucksack at her feet. She pulled out her phone and began doing something.

Tony was curious now. He pulled out his own phone and hacked Katie's. She was on the school website and was hacking it. He was impressed. She had only had the phone for a day and was already forcing her way into control centres of school websites.

"Stop hacking my phone Playboy." She said quietly and Tony looked up at her shocked.

"How the hell?" he asked and she just smirked.

He didn't know if it was just the light but her eyes were now the electric blue instead of the dull grey.

He looked at her in amazement for a moment before he did as she said and un-hacked her phone and put his own away.

Katie had figured something out. She needed to call Fury as soon as possible.

She'd hacked the school websites mainframe and checked all the students' names. She ran a simultaneous program on SHIELD. 2 people had files on SHIELD who went to the school. A student called Dean Russell and another called Carter Yipes.

The bell rang and Katie bolted straight out of the door. She was temporarily caught in the crush but soon made it into the courtyard behind English.

She pulled out her phone and called Fury's private phone number. It rang twice before Fury picked up. "What?!"

"Hey nick, I figured something out-"

"Katie?"

"Yeah, it's me. Listen-"

"Katie, I'm sorry but we have a bit of a hacking problem."

"Yeah, that was me. So I need to-"

"Wait! What?! It was you that caused the high profile alert for hacking top secret files?"

"C'mon Nick. Is it really that hard to believe?"

"No. but why?"

"That's what I was trying to explain." She said in an exasperated tone.

"Go on then."

Katie groaned. "Right, Dan Rudd and Chris Young are actually Dean Russell and Carter Yipes." She heard typing on the other end of line. Katie continued. "You should find their files straight away. They already have several accounts of extremist behaviour and have been spotted at several extremist events."

"Found them. But how did _you _find them?"

"I found their named on the school website."

"What?!"

"The extremists go to our school." Katie said in an almost whisper.

"Ok, I'm on my way over; this can't wait for a meeting."

"Alright." Katie put the phone down and looked at her reflection in the window in front of her. She gasped at the figure she saw standing behind her. Her phone dropped from her hand and she spun round. Nobody was standing there. She could have sworn he was there. He was definitely there. Her heart was beating in her chest and her breaths were deep.

She could feel her eyes glowing in anger. She squeezed her eyes closed and told herself that she was being silly. She would not . . . she could not let him take control again. She felt her eyes going back to normal as she looked down to her phone.

Her breath caught in her throat again. She bent down with a shaky hand and picked up the battered joker card from the floor. She felt her fear spike.

Her mouth was dry and tears of no hope pricked her eyes.

She fiddled with the card for a moment and fear was replaced with a burning anger. It erupted straight from her core; from the centre of her heart.

She all but growled as she ripped the card in half and in half again. She dived her hand into her bag and pulled out the old fashioned lighter from the bottom of the rucksack.

Katie set fire to one set of corners and dropped the pieces on the dry concrete floor. She watched them shrivel and turn to ash with an eerie green flame.

Katie suddenly wondered why she had a lighter in her bag.

Her dads' words echoed around her head. _'Always carry a lighter, a Swiss army knife and a pen.'_ She was 5 when her dad had given her all 3 and, taking heed of his words, carried them wherever she went.

Her dad was a very wise man. He had grown up on the wrong side of _behaviour_. He never specifically agreed with the religion he was born into but went through a religious education and quit altogether at 16. He was a mechanic by trade but owned the family farm. Katie used to watch her dad in his workshop and was in total awe when he could literally bring a dead car back to life.

Katie smiled at the memory of her family but was quickly pulled out of it by the bell ringing for next lesson.

She looked down and picked up her phone. The 4 burn marks next to it were the only signs that the joker card ever existed, along with the lighter in her hand.

Katie sniffed and bought herself fully back to earth.

She made her way to her first chemistry lesson, knowing full when that she would be pulled out of her lesson by director Fury.

She caught up with Bruce and Tony as they were in the same level as her.

"Hey Paddy." Tony greeted as he hooked his arms over Katie's shoulder. Kate decided that since _paddy_ wasn't said in spite she would let it slip but a part deep down told her that it was how close Tony was that stopped her from saying anything. She silenced this part.

"Hi playboy." She said with indifference.

Tony smiled. "You're going to keep calling me that aren't you?"

"Are you going to keep calling me Paddy?"

"Yep."

"Then there's your answer."

Bruce smiled at their short conversation as they walked into science.

They were lined up at the back so that the teacher could place them next to a person of the opposite gender when they were sat down.

Tony looked on with a casual expression but secretly he didn't want to be separated from Katie.

In the end he was sat next to Katie with Bruce sat on the table in front of them next to a girl called Cassandra Mayfeld.

Katie smiled when the blonde introduced herself as _Cassy. _She had a feeling that they would be seeing _a lot _more of Cassyas time progressed.

As happy as he was about being sat next to Katie, his heart sank when Jason was sat on the opposite side.

Textbooks were handed out along with paper to write on.

Mr. Brown was the teacher of the chemistry lesson and all he did, when the students were copying and answering questions, was sit with a mug of coffee and the newspaper with his feet on the desk.

Jason purposely moved himself so that he was knocking Katie every time he wrote a word. Katie looked up and sighed. The room was quiet so she only whispered. "Can you stop knocking me please?" she asked.

Jason just looked at her and did an emotionless "sorry."

Katie decided that it was acceptable despite the fact that he was annoying her more and more.

What she didn't expect was for Jason to keep knocking her but to say sorry every time he did so. She sighed and looked over to him. "Did you hear me?" she asked.

"I'm sorry what?" he replied.

"I said, did you hear me?"

"Sorry I don't speak Irish." He looked back to his book. Katie squinted at his comment but turned away.

Tony had watched the whole thing unfurl and could see Katie tensing. He expected that one more thing would set Katie off.

He watched as Jason knocked her again and Katie snapped.

XxX

It was an understatement to say that Katie was in a bad mood. She was sat in the small room of detention. There was one other person was a gothic-looking boy with his feet on the table and a rock magazine in his hands.

The tsunami of words that had flooded from her mouth had been hard to keep track of. There were several swearwords, in English _and _in Gaelic, and a very clear explanation that if he had _'beef'_ then he should take it up with her after school. Jason had squared up and it was easy to say that Jason would have a black eye for a few days.

All of these have ended her up in immediate detention.

One of the student support workers came in for the fourth time in the last 20 minutes. She was a short brunette with a neat bob haircut and wore a smart dress. Katie didn't know what else this woman could say. She had lectured Katie twice about how her actions were a bad impression to make and the third time was to talk to the gothic boy. Katie was really hoping that this time was also to talk to the boy.

Sadly not. The support worker walked over to Katie's desk with a slip of paper and a slightly confused look on her face.

"You're wanted in reception. Apparently it's urgent." She said and Katie smiled. She stood up and hooked her bag onto her shoulder. The support worker stopped her. "You'll be expected back her when you're done."

"Yeah, yeah." Katie dismissed the worker and walked from the room.

It took her a few minutes to get to reception where director Fury, looking slightly less agent- like than normal, and the rest of the avengers were stood.

Fury looked over to her with an unimpressed look on his face. "We'll talk about _this _later." He said. Clearly talking about the detention on the second day. "Right now we have bigger problems." He said turning towards the rest of the group.

Katie lent on the table next to Clint and Natasha as Fury began talking.

"Now," Fury started. "Katie has found out some distressing news." Everyone was listening now. "The extremist leaders name is Dean Russell and his assistants name is Carter Yipes."

Tony had his arms crossed over his chest and shrugged. "Why was this so urgent?"

"Because both boys are students at this school."

"What?!" everyone yelled at the same time.

Bruce stood forward. "You said we would be safe here!" he yelled. "You said they didn't know who we are! You said they didn't know _where _we are!"

"The likelihood-" Fury tried to convince him that everything was fine but he was cut off.

"That's what you said yesterday!" Bruce shouted.

Clint, Natasha and Katie were looking at each other knowingly and it only took a minute for everyone else to catch on.

Clint discretely reached into the bottom of his bag and grabbed the collapsed bow, while Natasha unzipped her jacket to make sure she had easy access to the handguns in the holsters around her torso.

Bruce let out a grunt and swiftly left the school.

Fury looked towards the agents and Katie. "Can you take him?"

They nodded and Katie pulled the black plastic case out of her bag before they ran out of the school in pursuit of Bruce.

Fury looked to the remaining 3 heroes. "I want you to stay on alert. I want you to keep your earpieces in and be ready for action if Katie, Clint or Natasha needs you. I need to alert SHIELD of the Other Guy possibly making an appearance." Fury quickly left through the same doors as Bruce, Katie and the agents.

Steve looked to Thor and Tony. "May as well sit down." he said and they all sighed as they did so.

Meanwhile, Katie and Clint had taken to the roof of the school building to get eyes on Bruce as he ran into the woods behind the school. Natasha stayed to the ground and Bruce disappeared. "Keep pursuit." Natasha said. Katie and Clint were coming to the edge of the school building. They flashed smirks at each other as they both leapt and flew towards the trees.

"Nice to have you back Ranger." Clint said and Katie smiled,

"No one's called me that in years."

"Well get used to it. It's codenames in situations like this." Clint took another jump and landed in the next tree. Katie balanced across the branches until she came to a good vantage point. Clint looked back to her and she signalled for him to go and find Bruce.

She opened the case and began sliding together the rifle. She pulled out the small bag of pellets and loaded one into the gun before tying the bag to her belt loop.

She gripped onto the rifle and jumped from tree to tree.

There was a loud roar from somewhere deep inside the woods. Katie stopped and listened. She could feel her adrenalin running and if it got any higher her eyes were going to glow.

There was a loud crack as a tree snapped and several more loud snaps as it crashed to the ground. Katie jumped in the general direction until she spotted Hulk. She stopped again and spotted Clint. There was another series of cracks as another tree fell atop the first.

Clint and Katie cringed as the school bell rang. Hulk looked up from the ground and his nostrils flared as he took deep breaths and then roared again and began running towards the school.

"Shit!" Clint said as Katie pulled the rifle into her shoulder and effortlessly fired the rifle in the centre of the back of Hulks head.

Hulk skidded to a stop and slowly looked around to where the shot had come from and Katie jumped from the tree. She landed without pain and fired the rifle again and fired it into his chest. He could have shot him in the middle of the forehead but she knew that Bruce was in there somewhere and she wouldn't be able to justify hitting Hulk in the forehead when it would also be hitting Bruce. "You're going soft Katie." Muttered to herself before she began running. Hulk roared and ran after her.

Katie knew that she could at least outrun Hulk for five to ten minutes and while she was working out the exact amount of time, Natasha joined her at a full sprint. "Smart move, genius." She said.

"Actually, it was. Bruce was heading towards the school."

"Oh," Natasha said as she looked back. "Look out!" she shouted and jumped to the side as a tree landed where she and Katie had been. She looked up and saw no sign of Katie.

"Katie!" she shouted.

"Going up." Was the simple reply she'd gotten. She looked up and saw Katie figure climbing the nearest tree.

Natasha scoffed and hid herself in the bushed. Katie was propelling herself up the tree when she heard Hulk roar and the tree began falling to the ground. Katie jumped to the next tree and Hulk looked around, confused. Katie spotted Clint. "How long does this usually last?" Katie asked.

"Nobody really knows."

"Well that's just dandy." She said and looked back down. Hulk spotted Clint and Katie shot the rifle again and then moved before Hulk could spot her. When he tried to see Clint again, he had moved too.

Hulk suddenly started swaying unnaturally. Clint and Katie looked at each other and frowned as Hulk fell and hit the floor with a crash.

He began morphing back into Bruce and Natasha was by his side first. Katie jumped from the tree and Clint climbed down.

"Bruce?" Natasha was saying as she tried to wake him up. Katie checked his breathing and his pulse. He was alive but he was unmoving and out cold. "Call the others." Natasha said. "We're going to need some help."

_**The next chapter should be uploaded tomorrow because I have that one written down too. Thank you for favourite-ing and following and reviewing because getting notifications about this are what's keeping me going so don't stop.**_

_**Katie is copyrighted to me, I own her, her past, her present, her future and her enemies. I don't own any of the marvel characters.**_

_**Hope you're all enjoying. Please comment. Enjoying writing this story again now.**_


	7. Chapter 7- Broken Laws

_**Chapter 7! Pretty happy with this chapter. I keep forgetting things that I need to mention in chapters so tell me if there are any problems. Loving the reviews and the follows and the favourites. Thanks guys.**_

Tony had shot up like a rocket when Katie had reported in. "Bruce is down!" she had stated. "He's unconscious and not waking up!" Tony hadn't even cared about why he was down. Apparently Cap had other ideas and Tony heard the whole thing.

"Why's he down?"

"We don't know. He was hulk and then he fell over and . . . wasn't hulk." Tony could almost hear Katie shrugging from the lack of knowledge she had.

"Ok, what's your position?"

"I'm gonna be honest with you Cap, I haven't the foggiest."

"Then how do you expect us to find you?" Steve said. Clearly thinking that Katie had been irresponsible by not remembering where she was.

"Steve." She addressed. The slight anger was evident in her voice. "We're in the middle of a 300 acre wood. What do you want me to say? We're next to the tree?"

"That would help."

Katie sighed in anger and almost disbelief at how much guts he had. She was about to say something but all they could hear was Natasha in the background. "Katie. Eyes."

Tony would have smiled but he was too busy putting the iron man suit that had been hiding in a box in the bottom of his school bag.

"Well, how-"

"Cap, leave it!" Tony shouted into the earpiece. "I can track heat spots through the suit."

Steve looked at him with slight confusion.

"JARVIS?" he said to the AI. "Scan for heat patches and report them back to me with direct path visuals." The small hologram appeared inside his suit next to his right eye and it zoomed in on 4 areas of heat in the middle of the woods.

He zoomed off. "Follow me." he said audibly through the suit as he directed himself through the trees.

He could tell he was getting close when it was suddenly evident that there were at least 10 trees that had been snapped at the base of the trunks. There were splinters everywhere and the occasional broken branch here and there. It was easy to tell that hulk had been nearby.

Katie, Clint and Natasha came into view and Tony landed quickly, this was not a time for fancy descents. He lifted his faceplate off. "Cap and Thor will be here in a minute." He said. "How's he doing?"

"Well he's alive if that's the answer you're looking for." Natasha said with her fingers on Bruce's wrist to feel any differences in his heart rate.

"Not exactly. What do you think happened?" Bruce's head was lolled to the right and Tony knelt down and gently moved his friends head to it was level. Katie cocked her head as she noticed something that she hadn't seen before.

She eyed up the green and orange dart and gently plucked it from Bruce's neck. He sighed and his body un-tensed but he still didn't wake up.

Tony made a small sigh and then joined Natasha and Clint in looking at Katie and the dart. Katie looked at it carefully before smelling the end and leaning away in disgust. She looked like a horse that had just sniffed up a fly.

Clint, Natasha and Tony looked at her expectantly. She looked up. "It's poisoned." She said without _'beating around the bush'._

Captain America and Thor appeared and didn't say a word. They knew that something was wrong.

"Right," Katie said. Looking round and checking that they hadn't missed anything before she began speaking. "Hawkeye and widow need to get Bruce back to HQ." She looked to them. "I don't care how many road laws you break, he needs to be hooked up to as many machines as they can find as soon as possible." They nodded and began preparing Bruce to be moved. "Thor and Cap, I need you to relay information." Thor looked slightly confused but listened anyway. "While Hawk and Widow are sorting out Bruce, I need you to tell Fury that whatever is on the end of the dart has not only rendered Bruce unconscious but it's bought him out of the Hulk state. Take this." she handed Steve the dart. "Don't touch the end. Tell Fury not to do any tests until Tony and I get there."

"Where are we going?" Tony asked.

"We are going to break the law just like Clint and Natasha." She smiled. She turned back to the rest of the groups. "We'll meet you at HQ in 20 minutes."

The group split off and Tony watched Clint and Natasha gently carry his unconscious friend away. He felt a gently touch on his shoulder. He turned to see Katie. "We'll save him." she said and Tony nodded to the ground. "Now, c'mon Playboy. We've got some chemicals to steal."

She began running and Tony set his thrusters so he was flying next to her. He was slightly surprised that she could run as fast as she was. On the outskirts of the woods, Tony took the suit off and it moved into the small portable box which he kept firmly in his hands.

Katie didn't have time to dismantle the rifle so she made sure it wasn't loaded and pushed it into the waistband of her trousers and up the back of her vest.

"So where are we going?"

"We need to get to the science prep room. I don't know what things SHIELD has in stock so we need to grab a few things." They walked around the back of the prep room and Katie looked inside the window. "The teachers will be in the biology classroom for break." She said to Tony as she set to work on the windows lock.

Tony made sure nobody walked past but was surprised when she unlocked the window within 3 seconds. He looked from the open window, to Katie, to the window and back at Katie. She had nothing in her hands and there were no signs of forced entry on the window or its frame.

"How the hell?" he said.

Katie shrugged and began climbing through the window. "It's a 1989 Braysons square-bolt key lock. There's a reason they don't make them anymore. It'll be easy to set back when we get what we need."

"What _do _we need?" Tony asked as he landed inside the prep room.

"There were chemicals on the end of that dart. I'm not too sure if they were acids or alkalis so we need some of each. I doubt that SHIELD will have simple chemicals amongst their highly dangerous, barely known, specialised ones. The pones we need should be in the overhead cupboards."

Tony began rooting through the chemicals finding what they needed. Katie was about to check in the cupboard above the desk when something caught her eyes. _'Missing' _was the title in chicken-scratch handwriting. Katie quickly memorised the list of chemicals following and then began rooting through the cupboard.

Once they had both carefully lined their schoolbags with safety cloth, they wrapped each sealed bottle in the same cloth and placed them gently in their school bags. They quickly climbed back out of the window and while Katie was replacing the lock she checked that everything was in place.

Tony and Katie ran as quick as they could without shaking their bags too much. "Straight to HQ." Katie said before she pushed her helmet over her head.

Tony wasn't sure how many road laws he broke whilst driving to SHIELD but he was sure that Katie broke more. All Tony knew for certain that if he saw a way that would get him into the lab quicker, or a direction that would cut the driving time by a minute or two, he was going to take it.

Katie and Tony strode into HQ and were met by, a very concerned looking, Phil Coulson. Tony saw the look on Coulson's face and his colour drained. "Director Fury is waiting for you outside Bruce's medical room." Tony's colour returned slightly. "I'll take you there." Tony swallowed but followed with Katie by his side.

Coulson stopped at the corner and Tony and Katie spotted the Director. He was watching Bruce closely through the window to his room. Tony wasn't sure if he wanted to see Bruce; He wasn't sure if he wanted to talk to Fury but he knew that he had to.

"How is he?" Katie asked.

Fury shook his head. "He's gotten worse." He said solemnly. "Just like you asked, he's hooked up to everything we have. We're measuring his heartbeat, his breathing rate, even the gamma levels in his blood. We have blood tests being done but so far nothings come back."

Tony sighed inaudibly and looked through the window to Bruce's room. His friend was pale and his eyes were gently closed. The thing that worried him slightly was the straps over Bruce's wrists and his ankles. He knew that SHIELD knew what they were doing and he knew that since Bruce was hit with dark mid-hulk, there was a chance that he could wake up still mid-hulk.

"What have you done with the dart?"

"Nothing, just like you asked. Except for a small test on the poison coating the tip of the dart." Katie groaned and rolled her eyes.

"And?"

"We hardly found anything. What we did come back with was a confirmation of the fact that the structures of the chemicals are beyond yours a_nd _Tony's knowledge. And we don't have time for you to read a book." Katie's expression went suddenly more serious. "Katie," Fury addressed. "We need you to make a call."

Katie blinked a few times and swallowed. "Please tell me you're joking." She said in an almost begging tone.

"I think even Stark would agree this is no time for jokes."

Katie sighed again and ran a somewhat nervous hand through her hair. "c'mon, I mean . . ." she shrugged her shoulders. ". . . I don't even know her number. I haven't spoken to her in years. What if . . . what if . . . ?" she looked down.

"Katie," Fury said. "Don't play that card. We know you kept track of your friends."

"But I didn't stay in touch!" she turned around and ran her hand through her hair again before turning back. "I haven't spoken to _either _of them since I moved away. What if she's completely moved on and . . ." she took a sigh but there was more sorrow in this and Tony could see her breaths quickening. She looked like she was about to cry.

"Katie. Bruce needs your help." Fury said and Katie swallowed she looked down and pulled out her phone.

"Give me 5 minutes." She said and walked away towards the lab. Tony followed.

The lab was already set up. Bruce monitor was on a screen to the right and Tony was watching it with nerves. He was leaning against the desk twiddling his thumbs. He hated this feeling; the feeling of helplessness. He couldn't help Bruce until Katie decided that she wanted to put the damn phone to her ear and dial the number.

Katie was patting the phone on the palm of her hand and she was pacing back and forth. She had been doing this for _over _5 minutes.

She finally took a deep breath and pressed a button and placed the phone to her ear.

Tony waited anxiously but Katie was all but shaking as she waited for an answer.

"Hello?" a woman answered.

"Oh, umm, hey Mrs. McCughan. It's . . . urm, Katie . . . Katie Rover."

There was silence for a moment. "Katie?"

"Yeah, yeah it's me."

"Holy mother of Mary. Wow, it's been what? 3 years?"

"Nearly 5." Katie was smiling now and it made the corners of Tony's mouth turn up a little.

"No way. Anyway, I'm guessing you want Sarah?"

"That'd be nice. Thanks."

"Sarah! Phone!" there was the sound of somebody running down the stairs. "I'll just pass you on." After that, the mother was gone and Sarah's familiar tone was a welcome return to Katie. "Hello?"

"Hey Sarah."

There was dead silence. "I'm sorry, who is this?" Sarah said in disbelief.

"You got it right Saz. It's me, it's Katie."

"For the love of Jesus. Is it really you?"

"No, it's the feckin' Holy Ghost. Of course it me."

Sarah scoffed. "Now I know it's definitely you."

Katie smiled. "Yeah, so. I need your help."

"Of course, what do you need?"

"Well I need to see your face first. Do you have a webcam?"

"Duh, I'll hook you up now."

Katie handed the phone to Tony and he pressed a few buttons and the call appeared on the monitor. Sarah's face popped up. "Hey hey!" Sarah said triumphantly and sat on the computer chair. She looked closer at Katie's surroundings and cocked an eyebrow. "Where the feck are you?" she asked. Sarah was a blonde haired, brown eyed girl. She had geeky glasses and the shelves in her background were chock-a-block with books; from fiction to fact, from science to English, from leaflets to the bible.

Katie chuckled and scratched the back of her neck. "I'm . . . umm . . . I'm at SHIELD."

"You're back with them?!" Sarah smiled and shouted.

"Yeah, I guess I am."

Tony groaned and pushed himself from the counter. "c'mon, catch up time later. My friends fatally ill at the moment, remember?"

Katie turned to him. "Oh yeah, yeah. Sorry."

"Who's that?" Sarah asked.

"_That_ would be Mr. Stark."

Sarah's jaw dropped and her eyes widened. "_The _Mr. Stark?"

"Yes, _the _Mr. Stark."

Tony rolled his eyes. "Would you stop calling me that?" he popped onto the screen. "Tony's fine." He said and then moved away.

"Oh, my, god!" Sarah almost shouted. "You know Tony Stark; you're in the same room. You're breathing the same _air_!"

"Ok," Katie cringed. "That's slightly creepy."

Tony smiled and popped onto the screen again. "I'm starting to like this girl." He looked to Sarah. "hi." He put on a flirty smile and Katie rolled her eyes and pushed him away.

"Who was it who was just telling me that you have a best friend who's in _dire_ need of saving?!"

Tony slumped slightly and began setting up some things from out of his bag.

"Ok," Katie sighed to Sarah. "Here comes the science-y bit. I take it that you're still obsessed with how the structured of chemicals change when combined?"

"Yup."

"Good and I also take it that you've heard of Bruce banner and the hulk?"

"Of course."

Katie bit her lip. "Yeah, well." Katie looked to Tony. "He's ill." Tony swallowed and looked down. Katie turned to Sarah. "So we need your help."

Sarah thought for a moment. "Ok, how is he ill? Explain the situation."

"Well he was pierced with a dart and has been unconscious ever since."

"Can you zoom into the particles at the end of the dart?"

"I assume so." Katie turned to Tony. "Can we?"

Tony smiled and pointed to the microscope in front of him. "Already done."

Katie cocked her head and her eyes widened in disbelief. She sighed, dumbfounded, and turned back to Sarah. "I think that Tony can stream you what the particles are doing right now."

Tony pressed a button on the side of the microscope and then walked over to the monitor and pressed another button.

Half of Katie's face was then blocked by the video of what sat beneath the microscope. Sarah emotion changed to one of confusion, interest and concentration. Tony and Katie waited anxiously until Sarah came to a conclusion. "Well it looks like the particles are waiting to shrink. I think that they are concentrated gamma particles that have had the gamma radiation extracted from their central core."

"So they need gamma radiation to be harmless?" Katie asked.

"Yes but they're concentrated so the amount of gamma in his system isn't going to be enough. They will have started shrinking everything that's compatible. It will be putting pressure on his vital organs."

"Well how do we stop the pressure?"

"I assume that you need to provide the poison particles with gamma radiation that isn't from his body."

Tony suddenly looked up. Katie could almost see the light bulb above Tony's head suddenly light up. He ran to another monitor. "JARVIS!" he shouted.

"What was that?" Sarah asked.

Katie shook her head in dismissal, looked to tony and sighed. "Tony's had a . . ." she turned back to Sarah. "Epiphany, for lack of a better word."

Tony frantically typed codes onto the monitor screen. "I need you to get into SHIELD database and look through the stock list to see how much liquid gamma they have."

There was quiet for a moment as Katie watched Tony. "SHIELD currently has 30 vials of liquid gamma; 4 of which are being held in Bruce's case to your left."

Katie's eyes widened as she and Tony both eyes up the case. Katie turned to Sarah while Tony pounced on the case.

"I think we've-"Katie was stopped midsentence by a quick bleeping noise and Bruce's monitor flashing red. Katie looked over with fear at the monitor. "Tony?!" she shouted.

"Yeah! I heard! My best friend's dying!" there was the sound of smashing glass and Katie groaned and looked back to Sarah. "I'm going to have to go."

"Sure, you've got work to do." Sarah reached forward and cut off the call.

There was the sound of more breaking glass. "Shite, Tony! You're going to ruin our only chance at saving him."

She walked over and moved Tony out of the way. "I need you to look in your bag and find some of the strongest alkali you can get." Tony did so and moved it over to the counter where Katie was placing the vials of gamma into holders.

The bleeping of Bruce's monitor was putting her on edge but Tony snapped before she did. "JARVIS, turn off that noise."

The beeps stopped immediately and both of the teenagers breathed a sigh of relief. "Alright, the gamma should combine with the alkali as soon as they are placed in the same tube." Tony said.

The bleeping suddenly started again but it wasn't the same. This time it was a long, continuous sound. A sigh of disbelief left Tony as he looked at Bruce's monitor.

A flat line.

_**Sorry I had to leave it there. The chapters I wrote in my notebook are either too long or too short so I had to change them and pick other places to end. I'm going to try and update by tomorrow evening but I go to school again tomorrow so I won't be typing **_**all **_**day.**_

_**Just a note but this is the 3**__**rd**__** time I have become addicted to the 80's TV program '21 jump street'. If you've read my bio then you know that I'm obsessed with Johnny Depp as well as RDJ. The TV program isn't aired in the UK so I've had to watch it on YouTube and I love it. I thought I'd watch every episode but I looked at the program run-through on Wikipedia and found out that I've still got loads to watch. Can't wait. Anyway, that was just a note if anyone was interested.**_


	8. Chapter 8- Please!

_**Here's your three day late update. Hope you's all enjoy it. Sorry its kinda late.**_

Everything went in slow motion.

Tony and Katie looked at each other in panic and stayed there for a moment with mouths slightly agape and eyes wide. They both mentally agreed that they still had to keep trying.

Tony quickly poured the liquids into the same test tube and then transferred them into a syringe before he handed it to Katie. She ran.

Everything went slow for Tony. Each breath he took echoed around his head, accompanied by the constant monotonous beep of Bruce's flat line.

He knew that Katie was faster than him on foot; there was no denying that. He knew that is Bruce had any chance of surviving; Katie having the cure would help.

A sudden cold chill ran down his spine and his insides went cold. What if the cure didn't work? What if they were wrong? What if Katie got there in time but the cure didn't even work?

_No! _Tony mentally scolded himself. Bruce was going to survive, Bruce _needed _to survive.

He rounded the corner into Bruce's medical room. Everyone was looking solemnly at Bruce's limp body on the table. A helpless sigh escaped Tony's lips followed by an inaudible shaky breath.

He looked up to Katie who was staring forward in sadness and somewhat disbelief. She began moving back until she hit the wall at the back. Each step she took shook her whole body as she had made the rest of her limbs slack. She felt the wall against her back and slowly slipped down to the floor. She took a deep breath and looked slowly up to Tony with slightly glazed eyes.

She didn't even have to open her mouth for Tony to tell that she wanted to say _'I'm sorry'_.

Clint had his arm around Natasha's waist. They both walked over to Katie and Clint placed his spare hand onto Katie shoulder in reassurance.

Every ones' head shot up to look at Bruce. Something was happening. There was no longer just one continuous bleep. There was a pause and then another beep; and then another and then another. The sound coming from the heart monitor got faster and faster until it sounded normal.

The medics pounced into action as Bruce began to stir. Tony was still slightly sceptical that this was even happening but as Bruce opened his eyes he breathed a gentle sigh of relief.

Katie closed her eyes and the words _'thank you'_ ran through her head. She didn't know who she was thanking but she knew that Bruce had been dead for almost 5 minutes, there was a likely chance that he would be pronounced dead and would have been led to a morgue had this been a hospital.

The medics were speaking to him calmly, knowing full well that Hulk could pop up with some unfinished business.

Katie decided it was best to leave before all the happy words were exchanged. Tony looked at her as she walked towards the door behind him. "Well done Playboy." She said quietly and he smiled.

"We did alright Paddy." He said equally as quietly.

Katie smiled and looked down before she walked past him and out of the door. She had no place in a room where happiness and joy were.

XxX

Katie looked down over the edge of the building. She was stood on the balcony of Stark tower with 3 empty bottles of Irish whiskey at her feet.

She blew out a slow breath into the cold air, watching the steam disperse before she took another long sip of whiskey. She had been on the phone to Sarah for almost an hour after Bruce had woken up. Once she had put the phone down she didn't know what to do, so she decided alcohol was the answer.

She looked up to the sky and sighed. The sky was clear but the lights of the city were blocking out the stars; for some reason this bothered her.

She wondered where her old life had gone. She wanted to know where her neat little existence had gone. She needed to know what had happened to her systems and her precision and her _routines_. She missed her routines.

She heard someone behind her and smiled as she realised who it was. "What are you doing out here?" Tony's smooth voice sounded/

Katie smiled wider and simply held the whiskey bottle so he could see it. "Ah," his voice was louder as he walked beside her. "So we have an alcoholic in the building?"

"No," Katie smiled. "It doesn't affect me, which is a shame, considering that sometimes you _need _it too."

Tony looked at her, clearly knowing a little of how she felt. He then realised. "Alcohol doesn't affect you?"

"Nope." Katie said simply, without looking to him and keeping her gaze along the skyline.

"That must be a handy little trick." He said in somewhat awe.

Katie sighed and gulped down the rest of the whiskey. Tony looked at her and cocked an eyebrow. She finished and sighed. "Ok," Tony leant on the side of the glass wall that stopped them from just falling over the edge. "Now you have to tell me what's up."

Katie looked over to him and slumped. "Was it that obvious?"

"I'm pretty sure that _nobody _would neck a bottle of Irish whiskey just because they could."

Katie blew air out through her lips. "I'm just wondering what calling Sarah could impact." Tony was going to say something but she cut him off. "And this excess adrenalin is driving me crazy!"

"The what?"

Katie turned around and lent her back on the glass wall as she looked at the tower. "The adrenalin rush I got from running with Bruce's cure. I couldn't do anything with it when we thought it didn't work. So now I'm left with this excess adrenalin and I don't know what to do with it."

"Well you could jump off the edge of Stark tower." He said sarcastically. Katie looked at the roof of the tower and cocked her head.

"How about doing the opposite?" she said and walked towards where the balcony met the mirrored wall. There were little nooks where the mirrors and glass met with each panel. She looked up and sucked her bottom lip. She nodded after a moment and began to climb.

"What _are _you doing?" Tony asked as he walked towards where she began climbing.

"Join me if you like." She said. "I'll be here for a while."

Tony sighed but also began to climb.

Katie had clearly scaled lots of things because she was already at the roof before Tony started climbing.

She sighed with contemplation as she felt the majority of adrenalin leaving her body. She looked over to the burn marks in the centre of the roof where the Teseract device had been.

Katie had watched the whole thing on the television. She had watched the event unfurl as the _'aliens invaded'_. She had watched as Tony disappeared through the portal. Thinking about it now made her stomach twist. The fact that Tony might not have come back through that portal made her nervous.

Tony poked his head over the side and hauled himself up. He stood up straight and looked around. "So what now?" he asked.

Katie sighed. "We wait for my adrenalin rush to go."

Tony shrugged. "So, what? You're, like, an adrenalin junkie?"

Katie looked at him, unimpressed and slightly taken aback. "Feck off. I am not a _junkie _to anything. My adrenalin levels are just higher than everyone else's and it takes longer for the adrenalin to leave. It drives me insane if I don't get rid of it."

"Oh, I get it. You're just weird."

Katie scoffed. "Coming from the lad who has a mechanical device in his chest." Tony smiled and looked down. "Can I see it?"

Her question caught him off guard. He looked at her to see if she was serious.

She was.

"Yeah, sure." He reasoned and pulled up his top.

Katie cocked her head to one side and gazed at it for a moment. She let her gazed drift down his chest and then she focused on the arc reactor. Tony watched her as she was seemingly mesmerised by the device longed in his chest. She slowly lifted up her hand and touched the metal, flinching at how surprisingly warm it was and then touching it again with more confidence.

Tony smiled as she looked, mesmerised by the blue of the lights and fascinated with the device as a whole.

Tony sighed inaudibly. "What did Coulson say to you the other day?"

The somewhat happy expression left Katie's

Face and her eyes drifted away in thought as she pulled her hand away from his chest. She swallowed and sighed. "You know how I said I killed Damien, Lewis and Connor?"

"Yeah?"

"Well apparently I didn't kill _Lewis_ well enough." She sighed and ran a shaky hand through her hair.

"What?!" Tony half shouted. "How do you know?"

"He was spotted; it was a hundred percent match."

Tony took a calming breath. "Ok, well where was he spotted?" he asked.

"2 states away." She said quietly.

Tony's eyes widened but he kept himself contained. It would have been a lie for Tony to say that he wasn't worried; but Katie was more scared than him, Katie wouldn't even make eye contact with him. "You'll be alright though, I mean, it's still two states away."

"But he should be in Ireland! Six feet under! In a nailed-shut coffin! Tony, we're talking about the son of the guy who ran the group that stalked me and manipulated my friends and killed my parents in front of me!" her eyes were welling up now and Tony reacted without thinking.

He grabbed her shoulders and pulled her into a hug. That forced the tears out of her eyes as she sobbed into Tony's shirt.

Tony didn't know if he acted on instinct or if he felt it was necessary; all he knew was that there was an emotional girl in front of him and he needed to be a shoulder, or more fittingly, a chest, to cry on.

"Hey, c'mon." He said reassuringly as he gently stroked her hair. "You're in her to protect us, remember? It's a double ended deal."

Katie sniffed and moved away. "Thanks," she said and wiped her eyes with her palm and chuckled. "I haven't cried in front of anyone in almost 5 years."

"Maybe it's good that you let it out." Tony said half-heartedly.

Katie heard that he didn't really mean what he said and scoffed. "Shut up!" she smiled and pushed him on the shoulder.

The tears were gone just as quickly as they had come and somehow Katie looked as stunning as she had before. Hey eyes were shining a calm shade of light blue. Tony smiled in awe as she turned and walked to the middle of the roof before she half flopped down onto the concrete.

Tony smiled and joined her.

Katie was looking at the sky. The stars were showing now they were higher up and Katie was smiling, somehow reassured by them. Her arm was gently draped over her stomach and her fingers were gently moving into guitar chords again. Tony noticed.

"Do you play?" she asked.

"Pardon?" she asked confused.

He indicated to her hand. "Do you play guitar?"

She looked down. "Oh, yeah. I hadn't even realised I was doing it."

"You hadn't realised?"

"No, I do it automatically for my mind to preoccupy itself."

"So it's just a twitch?"

"It is not a twitch!" she smiled. "It's just something my mind does subconsciously."

"Why?"

Katie looked over with a smiled and a small laugh. "Yeah, weirdo-stalker-murderer only two states away remember?"

Tony cocked his eyebrow in awe. "How can you laugh at that?" He asked.

She turned to him as if the answer was obvious. "Irish!" she said matter-of-factly. "We have brief moments of panic and then go back to our usual. I swear, an Irishman could be 5 minutes away from the apocalypse and he could look at his watch, shrug his shoulders and think, _'ah, well. Still got enough time for a whiskey, a ham sandwich and a shower, a shite and a shave'_ but they could actually get all of those things done before the world exploded." She laughed and Tony smiled.

"That sounds about right." He said.

Katie pulled a packet of cherry menthol chewing gum out of her pocked and slipped one into her mouth. "Want one?" she offered Tony and he took one.

Katie relished in the strength of the mint as it flooded her mouth, throat and nose. But it just made Tony wince as he tried to stop his eyes from watering.

Katie looked over and laughed. A few minutes and several gasps for air later, Tony had managed to stop his eyes from watering and Katie could breathe again.

Tony wanted to quickly take the attention from the fact that he couldn't eat a cherry menthol chewie without crying. "So what other weird things do you do?"

Katie looked over to him in shock. "I am not a performing monkey!"

Tony shrugged. "Shame that. I'd pay to see you." He said seductively. Katie elbowed him. He chuckled and moved his arm around her shoulders. She lifted her head up so he could move his arm into the back of her neck.

"We should have a codeword." He said absentmindedly.

"Excuse me?"

"We should have a codeword for when you're doing something weird. You said you don't know when you're doing it." He said again, simply.

She thought for a moment. "Like what?" she said sceptically.

"I dunno. Guinness."

"Guinness?"

He nodded. "Guinness."

Katie sucked her lip in thought. "Ok, the codeword is Guinness." She turned to face him. "But no abusing the codeword and it's only between us two."

"Deal." He said easily.

Katie was on her side, facing him and she was about two centimetres away from being fully nestled in his chest.

Within minutes, Katie was asleep. Tony decided that he didn't want to wake her and even if he did he knew they would both be too tired to get down. He was comfy enough and Katie was already asleep. So he stayed there.

A few minutes later, he felt his own eyes droop and in the most unlikely place, on the roof of his building, he finally had a peaceful nights' sleep with Katie lying next to him.

_**CHAPTER EIGHT! I'm so sorry I left the last one on a cliff hanger. To make it worse, I wrote up half this chapter and my little laptop broke without the chapter backed up. So I had to start again on the family laptop. I can **_**not **_**type on it and it took me donkey's years! Hope you enjoyed it. Updates coming soon.**_


	9. Chapter 9- No Running!

_**I figured, in terms of an update, I was slightly overdue. So I typed this up and here it is. Loving all the notifications I'm getting lately. Thanks guys. Keep it coming. Here's chapter 9.**_

Katie could hear cars and the sound of a plane going overhead. She had always been a light sleeper but this was ridiculous. Her eyes shot open. She was half sprawled over Tony's chest. She shot up and looked around with confusion. She had no idea what had happened the previous night and definitely didn't know how she got on the roof.

Tony began to stir and opened his eyes a crack before squinting because of the sunlight. He saw Katie and smirked.

Katie scowled. "Don't give me that look!" she said and hit him on the shoulder.

"Ouch!" Tony exclaimed, grabbing his shoulder with a confused look on his face. "What was that for?"

"I don't know!" Katie half shouted. "You tell me, do I have reason to hit you? Because I can't remember!"

"I-I-wait! You don't remember?"

Katie shot him a look and he smiled somewhat evilly. "I thought alcohol didn't affect you."

"It doesn't. I don't get drunk and I don't get hangovers but the memory loss lasts for around 5 minutes. Do you know how much alcohol I had last night? 4 bottles." Tony looked away in thought. Not listening to Katie but clearly thinking of ways to mess with her head. "4 bottles in an _hour_."

"So I have 5 minutes to scare the hell out of you?"

"If you do, I swear to god-"

Tony looked away thoughtfully. "You know, all the things you told me last night, I never knew you were so-"

"Tony, shut up."

"I think _sexual _is the right word."

Katie knew that she would never say anything but the fact that she had no proof that Tony was lying meant that she didn't really have any reason to say he was lying. She tried anyway. "You're lying." Katie accused.

Tony cocked an eyebrow. "Am I?" he turned to face her and Katie squinted in thought while their eyes locked in an extremely unromantic fashion.

The stare off lasted for less than 20 seconds before Katie reluctantly looked away. She sighed inaudibly and stood up. She walked to the edge of the building so the balcony was beneath her. She levered herself over the edge and efficiently grabbed one of the nooks before she began descending.

Tony looked over the edge and lent with his arms crossed on the wall just as Katie reached the balcony. "And I never figured you for a _'sex in a toilet cubicle' _kind of person."

Katie looked back and smiled. "Anthony Edward Stark, you are a rude and immature little boy!" she shouted to him.

"And that thing with the-"

Katie cut him out by putting her fingers in her ears and yelling "Nah! Nah! Nah! I'm not listening!" at the top of her lungs as she walked into the building.

Tony smiled his victory and began climbing down the side of the building. Katie smiled as she pictured Tony's victorious smile and got into the lift. She went up to the floor her bedroom was on and pulled a pair of ripped skinny jeans and a tee shirt on before pulling her rifle out of her school bag and making her way down to training.

Her memory still hadn't returned as she walked through the door to the training floor. She had taken no more than two steps when she heard the sound of an arrow flying through the air. She ducked instinctively and looked around. She saw Clint looking at her with a confused expression on his face and his bow pointing towards a target not towards her.

Katie breathed a sigh of relief, relaxed and smiled. "Do you really need to practice?" she asked.

"nope." He said as he loaded another arrow. "But it passed the time." He fired and it hit the bull's eye. "Why are _you _down here?" he asked, lowering his bow.

Katie sighed and walked over to the table to start setting up her rifle. "I was drinking again last night, I need to preoccupy myself with something until my memories come back." She clicked a piece into place, putting pressure on it to make sure it was in place.

Clint groaned and slumped. "_Again_?!"

"Don't say it so disappointedly. I called Sarah remember?" she swallowed.

Clint frowned with sympathy. "Is that how hard it is?"

Katie looked up with confusion. "How hard what is?" she clicked the last piece into place and checked it before turning to Clint.

"Thinking about your past?"

Katie sighed and slumped as she looked down. "Depends which parts." She said quietly.

"Katie," Clint grabber her shoulders. "Sarah and Dermot were your friends; they should be the easy parts."

"It was an easy part! Talking to Sarah was the most natural thing I've done in the last 5 years." She smiled sadly. "After helping Bruce, I went back into the lab and spoke to her for over an hour. It was the part afterwards, when I put the phone down and thought about what shite I could be getting her involved in."

"What do you mean? What shit could you possibly be getting her involved in?"

"Think about it Clint, these people were blackmailed and hurt because of me."

"Yeah, and yet Sarah still accepted your call. She didn't put the phone down as soon as she found out it was you on the other end, she still helped you with Bruce and she still spoke to you for an hour afterwards." Katie thought for a moment as Clint continued. "They were blackmailed and had to watch as you were taken away. Can you imagine their guilt? Do you think they never thought about it? Do you think they blamed you?"

Katie swallowed and smiled. "I haven't spoken to you properly since I've been here. I forgot how nice it was to talk to you."

Clint chuckled and pulled her into a tight hug. They stayed there for a moment and there was a _pop _in Katie's head as her memories returned. "Lying son of a bitch." She said quietly. Clint pulled back.

"Excuse me?!"

Katie smiled. "Not you. Tony."

Clint rolled his eyes. "What's he done now?"

"I was up on the roof with him last night." She said and Clint eyes widened in shock. "Not like that!" she pushed him softly on his shoulder.

Clint sighed in relief.

"Anyway, I was up on the roof with him last night after I'd been drinking and we fell asleep. When I woke up he found out that my memories were gone and he tried to make me think that I'd told him sexual things."

"Why didn't you just think he was lying?"

"I had no right or proof. Do you know how difficult it is being the girl with remembers _everything_ when you can't remember _anything_?"

"No but anyway?"

"My memories just came back, he was lying."

Clint sighed and stared at her blankly. "Do you know how excruciatingly uneventful that story was?"

"You asked!" She shrugged and suddenly realised something was missing. She looked around the training room as Clint loaded and fired his bow at the target.

"She's not here." He said before firing the arrow.

"That's what's missing!" she said in realisation. Natasha wasn't with Clint.

"Yeah, she's on a mission." He said as he fired another arrow.

"On a mission?! Now?!"

"yup." Clint walked forward to pluck to arrows from the target. "According to Fury, her _skill set _was needed."

"Then why aren't you with her?"

Clint looked over to her. "Because you lot need at least one highly skilled agent to look after you all."

Katie scoffed. "Give me that bow." She said.

Clint looked her up and down sceptically but slowly handed her a bow and an arrow.

Katie loaded up the arrow and lined herself up with the target. Clint watched with one eyebrow cocked as Katie fired the arrow. Clint's expression changed to shock as the arrow wedged itself into the board just right of the bull's eye.

Katie smiled with satisfaction and lowered the bow. She turned to Clint and held the bow out for him. He was just staring at her arrow, wondering if he was actually seeing it. He looked to Katie. "I didn't know you could do that." He said.

"It's the same principals as the rifle." She shrugged.

"Yeah, but you personalised the rifle just like I personalised the bow so how on earth can you hit an almost bulls eye with _my _bow."

Katie cocked an eyebrow with a smile, finding it comical that he was getting so annoyed that she could fire his bow. "Clint! Chill! I can fire your bow. That doesn't make me as good as you. I have the rifle, you have the bow. I'm not going to steal your weapon."

Clint still had a half sulking expression on his face, which Katie smiled at, but he accepted what she said. "If it makes you feel any better, you can fire my rifle."

Clint's eyes lit up. "Yeah, that would make me feel better."

Katie smiled and grabbed the rifle from the table. She loaded it and gave it to Clint. He had seen her hold and fire it before so he knew how to do it. Katie just stood back and let him fire it. He lined up the aiming lines and shot it.

He lowered the rifle and looked at where the pellet had hit the target. There was a hole to the left of the bull's eye and Clint smiled.

"Like I said, same principles."

The door to the training room swung open and Steve stood there, clinging to it for support as he caught his breath. Clint and Katie looked over to him with confusion and expectation. Steve took another deep breath. "Dean and Fury have made their first move." He said before forcing himself to run out.

Clint and Katie looked to each other with shock and the same confusion before placing their weapons on the side and chasing after him.

They ran into the conference room and took their seats. Director Fury was on the screen at the head of the table. Everyone except Bruce and Natasha was there.

Fury began talking. "Dean Russell has posted another comment on the web. He's trying to count how many people are willing to take action. He called it _'recruiting'_."

Everyone stared at Fury for a minute. "So this teenager is actually preparing to take _action_ and _kill_ us?!" Tony asked.

"It appears so, yes." Fury said.

Katie had her legs crossed and her head resting on her hand. She was gazing through the far wall and into the middle-distance, listening to the rising anger in everyone's tones. Clint was doing pretty much the same but he was actually looking at people as they spoke.

Thor slammed his fist on the table and everybody flinched. "Then why do we not just squish this Dean of Russell like the inferior creature he is?!" he boomed.

Katie didn't give time for Fury to answer as she came up with a question of her own. "Do his _'followers' _even know he's a teenager?"

Fury took a breath. "No, and that's why we can't take action like Thor . . . _asked_. If we stopped Dean and Carter now then one of his supporters will probably finish the business that he didn't manage to. So not only will we lose our leads on Dean and Carter but we will just be creating more mess for ourselves. But if the supporters find out on their own then it's likely that they will quit and, hopefully, will realise how silly an idea it was to participate in the first place."

Katie nodded her understanding and relaxed, accepting the answer and going back to listening.

"Wait," Steve said, sitting forward in his chair. "Does that mean we are still going to school?"

Fury waited for a second before answering. "Yes, you will be going to school, as per usual." He said.

"What?!" Tony said, only taking a second to process what Fury had said. "Why?!"

"Stark, we need to keep connections with Dean and Carter."

"You say you're helping, hell, you even bought Katie in. So why on earth would you send us back to school?" He was leaning forward and moving his hands a lot to express what he was saying.

Fury kept his usual posture. "We're keeping you in school because we have no proof that Dean and Carter even know who you are plus, we will lose every ounce of information we have if we pull you out."

Tony stared at Fury through the screen for a moment. "Good look telling Bruce." He said after a while and Katie smiled at his good point. "Because he's the one that died because someone at that school knew he was Hulk. Tell me Fury, have you thought about that?"

Fury shifted slightly, to show his authority. "We're doing tests on the dart, whoever shot it, weather it was Dean or not, will be found by this afternoon."

There was silence for a moment before Steve sighed. "Tony is right, sir."

Everyone, even Tony, cocked an eyebrow at Steve. It was common knowledge that out of all the avengers, Tony and Steve probably had _the _worst relationship in the building. They rarely agreed on anything and argued because of it; Tony was an atheist but Steve was a Christian, Tony was a genius but Steve gave the orders, Tony wore a suit of iron but Steve wore a . . . _leotard?_

"How so?" Fury asked almost cautiously. As if wondering is Steve was in the right mind to even take his input into consideration.

"It took Tony and Katie combined, along with an outside source, to find a cure for Bruce. What happens if Tony or Katie are hit next?"

"Thanks Steve." Katie said sarcastically and chuckled along with everyone else.

"No, no. I'm not saying that you'll get shot, I'm just saying it to make a point." Steve said with a smile."

Fury spoke again. "The only _point _is that if we don't persevere with this then we _will _be sending everything down the drain."

Thor stood up. "I think that we should respectively abandon this battle." He declared. "I'll admit that we should run."

"No!" Katie said without thinking about it. "I am _not _running!" she said in possibly the most serious tone any of them had heard her speak in. "I am speaking from experience when I say that if you run, whoever it is _will_ chase. They will pursue, and believe me, running is the worst thing you could ever do. I am not adding another name to my _chasers_ list."

"Yes but-" Thor tried to stay.

"You guys fought an army from outer space and yet you want to run from this?"

"This is different-"

"Is it?" Katie was talking to all of them now. "Because what happens if these guys notice you have ran and gain more followers because of it? Then what happens if innocent people get hurt in their hunt for you? I've ran for too long to start again."

There was silence as Katie sat back in her chair. Happy with the fact that after that little speech, they wouldn't think about running anytime in the near future.

"Well," Fury said. "I think that has pretty much summed up the 'school' subject. Are there any question?" nobody had any. "Good. Now Tony has activated the electronic tag-pass system. Your dog tags are fitted with electromagnetic tracking devices which were activated this morning. You all, except for Katie, also have the same tag implanted in your forearm. By the time you leave for school, Tony will have activated these too. The dog tags and the forearm devices will link to each other and become an immediate pass into Stark tower, SHIELD HQ and other places that you visit frequently. Anybody without both the forearm device and the paired dog tag cannot get into any locked place. This makes sure that of your tag is stolen then whoever stole it doesn't have access to locked places. It also means that if anything happens, we can track you."

Everyone nodded their understanding and felt relief at the fact that there were measures in place to make sure that they were somewhat safe.

"um." Katie said after a minute. "What about me, I don't have a forearm tag."

"I'm sure Tony can get you sorted before you go to school." Tony and Katie looked to each other and nodded. "Ok, meeting dismissed."

Tony looked over to Katie and gestured for them to go. She nodded and followed him out as everyone else left. They walked into the elevator and Katie cocked an eyebrow when Tony didn't press the button for the science floor. "Where are we going?" she asked. "I thought you'd be going to the lab."

"No, we're going to my workshop. That's where your tag is and it'd be a pain if I had to collect it and then go to the lab."

Katie smiled at his _logic _as the elevator doors opened. They came to another door straight away and Tony typed his code into the lock on the door. "Good morning sir." JARVIS said as the door opened with the 'hiss' of releasing air locks.

"Hey JARV." Tony replied to the greeting from his AI.

Katie had never seen his workshop and it was, to put it simply, amazing! She actually felt like she had died and been reborn in the middle of a toy shop.

"You like it then?" Tony said, clearly noticing the smile on her face.

"Hell yeah, it's fantastic."

Tony smirked and led her over to the table. "Please tell me you're not afraid of needles."

Katie smiled. "I'm not afraid of needles." She said reassuringly.

"Good, sit down here." He said and pointed to the table. Katie did so as Tony loaded the tag into what looked like a piercing gun.

She held her arm out and watched Tony gently hold her wrist and look at her forearm. "Ready?" he asked as he found the spot.

"yup." She said and he quickly placed the gun to her arm and shot it.

Katie flinched at Tony smirked. "Isn't there supposed to be a '1, 2, 3' or something?"

"You said you were ready." He said and looked up to her and their eyes met.

Katie didn't breathe. Tony didn't breathe. They felt that if they took a breath then the moment would be shattered and they would never get it back. Katie completely ignored the pain in her arm as Tony looked from her eyes to her lips to her eyes again.

Katie took a shaky breath while still gazing into Tony's deep brown eyes and found that the moment didn't leave. She swallowed. "Tony?" she asked after a minute and smiled.

"Yes?" he asked quietly.

She smiled, almost not believing she was going to say it. "Can I have my wrist back now?"

Tony looked down to his hand and realised that he was still gently holding onto Katie's wrist.

_**Chapter nine= COMPLETE. I swear that I never thought I would get this far. Enjoying it so much. Please review and tell me how I can improve. Not really got much to say so I'm going to leave you's all. Thanks for reading. **_

_**Starky247 xx**_


	10. Chapter 10- Sympathy

_**You have no idea how sorry I am how late this chapter is. I'm so sorry. I won't keep you any longer. CHAPTER 10!**_

Tony hadn't seen Katie since she had said goodbye to him that morning and if he was honest, he was worrying. She had broken down in front of him the night before and had suddenly disappeared. It was more than strange. It had been clear that the fact that Lewis was 2 states away was bothering her and worrying about her was the last thing on Tony's mind.

The remaining Avengers were in second period English and Katie hadn't showed up, even though they were 20 minutes into the lesson. Even Clint was wondering where she was which caused Tony to grow more worried.

He looked down to the paper he was writing and groaned. He had stopped deconstructing the text from the Sherlock Holmes novel and started making theories and developments on Katie's idea of the saving time in his backup arc reactor. He groaned internally. Everything he thought about had some kind of connection to Katie.

The door opened and Steve, Thor, Clint and Tony couldn't turn, to look, quick enough. The easily recognisable girl with black hair and blue eyes walked through the door with a sigh. Her shoulders were slumped and her rucksack was on one strap over her shoulder. She walked to the front and handed a note to the teacher without making eye contact with anyone.

As she moved past, Tony noticed the dull grey blue colour of her eyes. Something was wrong. Something was _very _wrong. Tony looked back to Clint who looked at his with a confused look.

Katie was wearing a pair of faded, ripped, straight leg jeans and a black tee shirt from a 'Shinedown' rock concert. She had a pair of grey converse on and a beanie hat precisely balancing off of the back of her head. She slipped it off as she sat down and ran her hand through her hair in a failed attempt to calm it.

She sighed and took her time as she copied the title from the board at the front. She dawdled and distracted herself with the precision of each letter she gently scribed.

Tony had watched her; _analysed _her, fitted his action more. As she distracted herself with anything, _everything_ she could. He could tell that the day was going to be weird, Natasha was on a mission and Bruce was under observation at SHIELD and Katie was majorly distracted.

The lesson was slow and it was a relief when it was over for everyone.

At break, the remainder of the group went to the stairs. Clint sat on the top step with Katie diagonally across on the step below him, she rested her head on his knees with the same blank look on her face. Tony was stood up with Steve and Thor making idle chat opposite him. Tony kept taking concerned looks at Katie and eventually he discretely gained Clint's attention and motioned to Katie.

Clint looked at her and tapped her on the shoulder. She looked up to him as she snapped out of the trance she had gotten herself into and looked up to him. He gestured for them to talk in private and she nodded.

Tony watched as they went around the corner and began talking in hushed tones.

Being SHIELD agents, they knew how to talk without being heard.

"So tell me what's up." Clint said in a friendly but quiet tone, knowing full well that there was going to be a certain billionaire eavesdropping on their conversation.

Katie rubbed her hands over her face with a sigh. "I take it that Fury told you about Lewis being close?" Clint nodded in admittance. "Well," Katie continued. "The caretaker called up telling me that my parents' grave had been defaced and there was a letter addressed to me. He sent it to SHIELD and I opened it with Fury and Coulson this morning, that's why I missed the lessons."

"What did the letter say?" Clint asked.

Katie took a deep breath and swallowed. "_This is only the beginning._"

Clint looked like he expected more. "That's it? Five words?"

"Yeah, and it's the scariest five words I've ever read." She looked away, trying to calm herself and stop her fist from _accidentally _cracking the plaster of the wall next to her. Anger or sheer sadness, she voted anger.

Clint sighed with sympathy. "How are you feeling?" he asked, deciding not to ask _'are you alright?' _considering it was a stupid question.

"Terrible," she admitted. "I can hear Lewis' voice saying the words. I can hear it constantly. I can't concentrate and I'm tense and I'm . . . I'm . . ." Clint could see Katie's fists clenching so he gripped her shoulders before she could punch something.

"Hey, listen!" he said firmly. "I- we won't let him touch you, I prom-"

"Don't promise!" she ordered and it took Clint by surprise. "You haven't met him; you don't know what he will do to get me."

Clint sighed. Suddenly realising how fragile Katie was inside. She needed to talk to Natasha. He was never really any good at this but it didn't take a genius to figure out that she was more _'damaged' _than she let on.

But being Irish, Katie could always find things to look forward to. "Anyway," she sighed positively. "I can't be depressed. The date won't allow it."

"Umm . . ." he looked away in thought. "What's the date?"

Katie stared at him in somewhat disbelief. "Clint." Was all she said.

"Is it . . . um . . . your birthday?"

Katie gawked at him. "My birthday's in May, it's March!"

He thought for a moment. "I haven't got a clue."

Katie groaned. "Clint! It's Saint Patricks Day."

Clint rolled his head in realisation. "Oh. I knew that!"

Katie nodded in doubt. "Sure you did. Anyway, we're going out later so don't abandon me for a mission or anything."

"Going out? Where are we going?"

Katie smirked and tapped the side of her nose. Clint smiled. He wanted to ask her if she was alright but he knew she would just roll her eyes and insist that she didn't have to worry about anything.

He sucked his cheek. He had seen Katie in what was most likely her darkest time and it led to her putting on this strangely convincing but fragile facade of strength and bravery but underneath her wounds were open and raw. The only thing that could keep him looking on the positive side was that she was nowhere near as bad as he had seen her before. He wondered if she ever thought about how she was before; how bad she had been when she was first bought into SHIELD. Part of him hoped she did, maybe it kept her sane, but part of him hoped she didn't; hoped she wasn't tormented by memories. Above all, he felt sympathy for her.

XxX

Katie walked to art with Steve at her side. The other Avengers had other lessons and Katie had never really spoken properly to Steve so she figured it was a good chance to talk.

"I didn't know you did art." Katie stated and Steve looked over to her. "I wouldn't specifically pin you as an artsy guy." They were walking around the school building to go to the separated art and design class rooms; they missed the traffic that way. There were still students walking around outside but there was just less than there was inside.

"It's just little doodles and sketches."

Katie shrugged. "Doesn't matter, it counts."

"Besides, I could say the same statement about you. You don't exactly hit me as a very arty person." He said as she pushed his hands into the pockets of the brown military leather jacket he had over the white, green and blue plaid tee shirt. He looked over to her and she sighed.

"My dad used to draw." She said simply. Steve didn't know if he regretted the decision to make the statement or not.

"I'm sorry." He said anyway.

"No it's fine." She said with a convincing smiled. "I don't mind talking about It." it wasn't exactly a lie. Dependant of what mood she was in, sometimes she would be able to speak about her parents and sometimes it was the last thing she wanted to do. Right then . . . she really wanted to talk about the good things she could remember. She continued. "I swear, my dad had such big hands, he was a mechanic so they were strong too, and yet, even when it was just a doodle of an engine piece on the back of an envelope, the lines he made were so soft and precise I could watch him for hours. Just like when he was fixing a car. He would literally bring these dead cars back to life." She realised that she was going slightly off subject but the main thing was that she was smiling. She was actually genuinely smiling about her parents. It felt weird; unnatural. "Anyway," she shrugged. "When you're on your own for as long as I was you will do anything to pass the time; reading, drawing . . ." she stopped and gazed out into the middle-distance.

Steve waited for her to finish her sentence but she never did. "Um . . . Katie?"

She looked over to him in somewhat shock as she snapped out of her trance. "Oh, sorry."

"You sounded like you were going to say something after drawing and reading."

"Oh, yeah . . . it's nothing."

"Go on." He said in a supportive way.

Katie blew air through her lips. "I used to go around pubs and stop people with offensive weapons or dangerous motives." She chuckled. "So while your standard of heroism is infiltrating a Nazi base . . . mine is setting up dangerous people so they get caught by the police."

Steve looked at her, disbelieving of the fact that she could do this. "How did you do it?" he asked.

Katie sighed and looked over to him in an '_I'm-not-going-to-lie-to-you'_ kind of way. "I got them to attack _me_." she said and looked down in somewhat disappointment.

Steve turned his head to her with a smile. "That _is _heroism." He stated.

She looked to him with a confused smile. "Excuse me?"

"Just a minute ago you pretty much said that compared to my level of _'heroism'_, yours doesn't matter. It does. You put your safety on the line to help others. I'd call that heroism."

Katie shrugged. "It's not at the same level though." She said quietly.

"It doesn't matter. It's all the same. Everything, big _or _small. It all makes a difference." He said with a small, genuine smile.

Katie looked down with thought and then turned to him. "I can tell you were a soldier." He didn't expect that response. "You can tell by the way you talk sometimes."

Steve looked away, somewhat flattered and looking like he was about to blush.

Katie smiled but it suddenly dropped from her face as she chill ran down her spine. Her body went rigid and she stopped against the oncoming students. Steve took a few more steps but turned as he realised Katie was no longer by his side.

Katie looked and assessed the faces of everyone in the oncoming crowd. Everybody was normal. She couldn't see what she was looking for but this was not the first time she'd had the feeling that someone was watching her. It was an intense, nerve-inducing stare that Katie could feel boring into her skin.

"Katie?" Steve's voice made Katie jump and she turned to look to him. "Are you alright?" he asked.

Katie took a few deep breaths. "Umm . . . yeah." She said in a self convincing tone. "Fine.

"C'mon then," Steve gestured in the direction of the art class. "We'll be late."

XxX

Katie looked down at the pencil sketch that lay on the table. She looked at the variations of thick and thin, hard and soft lines she had used to create the dimensions of the hand she had chosen to draw. The bell rang for the end of the lesson and she pushed the drawing into the folders each student had been given.

"homework for next week," the art teacher announced. "I want you to draw something that _inspires _you." She spoke with the hippie-like tone of a classic art teacher. It almost made Katie cringe.

Within seconds, Steve was by her side with his bag on his back and fully ready for fourth period maths. Katie looked over to him and smirked. "Well aren't you just 'Mr. Speedy?"

Steve smiled. "At least Speedy is better than Capsicle or Grandpa."

Katie frowned. "You don't take offence to Tony's nicknames do you?"

Steve shrugged and looked down. "Not really, but you can't really _take _offence to Speedy."

"Guess so." Katie reasoned as she placed her pencil case into her bag so it covered the rifle in the bottom of her bag. "c'mon, we have maths next, right?" the two began walking outside.

"Yeah." Steve replied with an unusually enthusiastic tone. Katie just groaned. "You don't like math?" he asked.

"Well I'm good at it, it's just one of those subjects that will forever be a lesson that makes you cringe, do you know what I mean?"

Steve thought for a moment as they made it inside and into the busy corridors. "No, not really."

Katie shrugged. She suddenly felt an arm around her shoulders and turned to see Tony. "Hey paddy." He said like it was normal to randomly put your arm around a girls shoulder and then call her a stereotyped name.

"Hey Tin man." She said and she felt his mini glare in the side of head. She just looked forward and ignore but she really wanted to smile.

"How's your arm?" he asked.

"Kinda like I had a small electromagnetic chip implanted in it less than 3 hours ago." She said in an honest tone and Tony smiled.

Katie suddenly looked up. She could hear the familiar sound of air bending round an arrow. She looked up just to see the arrow with a purple sucker on the end spinning towards her. "Duck!" she shouted and jumped to the side. This resulted in Tony being dragged with her as the arrow carried on where she had just been but hit Steve straight in the middle of the forehead.

Unlike Katie expected, though, instead of just falling off, the sucker stuck to Steve's head and he just stood there, shocked.

Katie and Tony looked at each other before uncontrollable laughter ripped through both of them. Steve was just staring forward in shock.

Katie turned to see Clint get down from his vantage point atop the lockers with the collapsed bow in his hand. He walked forward. "Sorry Steve."

Steve didn't answer; he just blinked and carried on looking forward. Clint cringed and carefully pried the sucker from Steve's forehead.

Katie and Tony laughed more. Katie couldn't breathe and Tony was all but rolling on the floor.

Thor's chuckled boomed around the corridor. "It may pay for you to be considerably more observant, my friend." He thumped Steve on the back and this pulled him out of his stunned trance.

Katie wiped the tears away from her eyes and managed to stand upright. Tony joined her once he had calmed himself down. "I thought Soldier Boy was supposed to be the one with the heightened senses."

Katie chuckled but it came out as full blown laugh as she looked over to Steve and saw the red mark where the sucker had been. Eventually, the whole group, even Steve and Thor were laughing about something; whether it was the fact that Katie couldn't calm herself or whether it was just that Clint had shot Steve with an arrow that had left an obvious mark.

Steve was rubbing his head to try and calm the redness. Once Katie managed to gasp in air, everyone suddenly realised that the corridors were almost empty. They all began to walk swiftly to the maths room.

The teacher, Mr. Edwards, has a young man around the age of 27. He was in a shirt and tailored black trousers with a black belt with a customised buckle. He seemed like a nice enough man, the students seemed to like him, but Katie could see the darkness in the back of his eyes; the dull colour that would go unnoticed, the part that made him skitter every now and then or dart his eyes around the room.

The Avengers were placed in seats that could only be further away from each other if they were all in separate corners of the room.

Katie and Clint were the only people who were near each other; they were just an empty seat away from each other.

Mr. Edwards handed out work about algebra and the 'nth algebraic term. Katie and Tony got straight to work and Steve spent a while just trying to get his head around it, Clint was frantically chewing on the end of his pen and Thor was trying to look at the books of the students next to him as he had no idea what was going on.

Around 15 minutes into the lesson, the door to the class room and a student stood at the entrance. The rest of the students just acknowledged him and then went back to working, but not Clint sand Katie. Their eyes widened.

This boy was in dark, severely ripped jeans with chains clipped to the belt loops and badges down the hem. He was wearing a black AC/DC tee shirt with real leather, loosely tied boots. He had strawberry blonde hair and blue eyes. He had the stature of a mature businessman but his ragged look told otherwise; a cunning disguise.

"Ah, Dean!" the teacher exclaimed. "I was wondering where you had gotten too. You can sit over there."

Katie squinted at the teacher's choice of words but suddenly realised that the bigger problem was the fact that Dean Russell had been placed to sit between her and Clint.

Katie analysed everything; the expensive watch on Dean's wrist and the way he would look up and around every now and again, she also didn't miss the fact that Mr. Edwards was calm now and was no longer skittering around.

She gently tapped the pads for her fingers on the desk and Clint noticed. It was a simple code that Katie and Clint had been using since they began working together years before; it just meant that Katie was done her scan and Clint could move in.

Clint waited for a moment before looking over to Dean. "Um . . . excuse me?" he whispered and Dean looked over to him with indifference before Clint continued. "I'm new here and I don't think we've officially met." He held him hand out. "I'm Clint Barton."

Katie assessed Dean's posture and expression as Clint attempted to start a casual introduction and possible conversation. "I'm Dean." He shook Clint's hand. "It's nice to meet you." He said simply before going back to his own work.

It was a completely normal reaction; in fact, it was _too_ normal. Dean went straight back to his work and Clint shot a cautious look to Katie before he looked back to his own work.

Katie did the same but she didn't pay attention to the textbook. She was too busy pouring over the pieces of information that could hold details as to how they could defeat Deans growing power. Something was just _too_ off about Dean; she knew that he was potentially a criminal who could kill the Avengers but there was still something that was out of place.

It gave Katie the chills.

_**Did you like it? Yet again, I'm really sorry about the late update. I think it's that I now have a general idea of where this story is going, or at the very least I know what the next few chapters are going to be about. I think it's the fact that this story is no longer keeping me on my toes and I'm no longer buzzing to write more in my notebook. Don't worry! I will keep writing because I'm loving writing it but I'm just saying that until I get an idea that was unexpected to myself, the updates may not be as quick as they once were. I promise that I won't abandon the story.**_

_**Still open to constructive criticism and please just give me some support (or possibly some tips?)**_


	11. Chapter 11- Normal

_**CHAPTER 11! Yay! I'm so happy. I made it to chapter 11! I also finished in my first notebook and had to start in my second. I'm actually really chuffed.**_

_**Haven't done disclaimers in a while. I do not own any of the avengers, they are property of marvel. I do, however, own Katie, her past, her future, her enemies.**_

_**Just want to mention frenchie122- who has commented on every chapter so far. It's really nice to read comments.**_

"He was where?!" director Fury shouted. Katie was sat on the chair with her legs crossed and her head in her hand. Clint had tried to explain about Dean and Fury had blown his top. It was just the agents and Fury in the conference room and Katie really couldn't be bothered with Fury's yelling. The rest of the avengers were at the tower, both Clint and Katie knew that it wasn't necessary for Tony, Thor and Steve to go to see Fury because they had just acted normally so as to no blow their cover.

"Dean Russell is in our math class." Clint stated for the second time.

Fury was . . . well . . . _furious._ Katie really couldn't be bothered with the directions shouts, she had other things to worry about on top of the fact that there was a world class criminal out to kill the people she lived with.

"That's it!" Fury threw his hands up in exasperation. "I'm pulling you all out of that school!"

Katie suddenly came forward and threw herself into the conversation. "You can't do that!"

Fury looked at her defiantly. "And why not?"

"Because we weren't very smart with this whole business in the first place." She made her point by half outstretching her arms and leaning forward

"How so?" Fury asked, moving back on his feet, ready to hear her point.

Katie relaxed slightly but kept talking. "Well for starters we went into a public school with our _real_ names and we all went in with a group. The way we have played this game has been stupid and predictable."

"Now wait a minute-"

Katie stood up. "No you wait a minute, Nick! We're doing this whole thing because you said it would protect them; _I'm _doing this whole thing because you said it would protect them and yet somehow _you_ haven't considered how this could go wrong." Katie's words were forceful and even Clint was shocked at how she was speaking. Fury, however, didn't even move.

"We _have_ considered things." He spoke in an almost disturbingly calm tone. "We even manipulated your lesson schedules to make sure you were safe. At the moment we're just trying to figure out how a teenager has managed to your lesso-"

"Of course he's managed to get into our lessons! He's figured out who we are! He's hardly-"

"We have no proof that he knows your identities."

"Oh, please! It's hardly rocket science to figure it out. Now think about it. Steve Rogers- a guy who's built suspiciously like captain America and hangs around with a guy call Thor- who looks conveniently like the Norse god as well as sharing his name, they hang around with Tony Stark- who is already a confirmed Avenger. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that they're the Avengers."

Fury took a deep breath. "Dean has a big production going on here; I don't think he can afford to take chances by relying on feeble guesses." He was still talking in the calm tone that almost made Katie's teeth grind.

She took a deep breath. She knew full well that Fury was trained not to give up. Fury also took a breath before he spoke.

"But none of your points have persuaded me not to pull you out of that school."

Katie thought for a moment. "Well, at the very least, Dean suspects who we are. If we pull out now then we're all but confirming our identities to him. He would know what we looked like and even our real names."

Fury nodded his understanding and looked over to Clint who had been silent as Fury and Katie had had their _heated discussion_. Clint shrugged. "She has a point."

Fury looked back to Katie. "Ok, I'm not going to pull you out of school." Both agents sighed and relaxed in their chairs. "But I take it you did your jobs."

Katie and Clint smiled to each other. "Of course." They said in unison.

Fury straightened up. "What did you find out?"

Katie averted her gaze and scratched her forehead, knowing that the question was directed at her. "Umm . . . not a lot."

The director looked at her like he had misheard. "I'm sorry? What?"

Katie shrugged and shook her head.

"Katie, I've just had an argument with you about why I shouldn't pull you out of school, you aren't really arguing your case. Is there anything that you _did_ find?"

Katie moved on her chair and sighed. "He is, or at least _acts_, normally. He wears clothes that suit his interests and acted calm when Clint introduced himself. The only thing that was out of place was the expensive watch on his wrist."

"So?"

"Well it means that he must have a way of making an income. That could be a piece that could become a clue. I don't know anyone who is making enough to buy a watch that Tony would own. The only other option is that he has rich parents but we know that's not true so it means that he has to be making money somehow."

Fury nodded his head slowly and looked up to Clint. "What did you get?" he asked.

Clint looked up, shocked that his name had been said. "Umm . . . not much really. His handshake was a normal pressure; he was neither possessive nor submissive. He was pretty much completely normal."

Fury looked down in deep thought and Clint and Katie looked to each other in somewhat confusion.

"Ok," the director said after a minute in a decisive tone that made the agents jump. "I won't pull you out of school and instead of avoiding Dean; I want you to go after him. Find out _everything_ you can about him; his past, I want every possible bit of information found out, confirmed and confirmed again. I don't want any pieces of information to slip through. We can't have any unexpected events occurring."

Katie and Clint looked to each other and smile at the thought of observational mission.

"Alright," Fury said. "You can go."

The two agents stood up and began to walk away. As they reached the door, Fury spoke again. "Katie?" she turned around. "I want you to be careful tonight and I want you to drive. You and Clint are in charge of the others."

Clint cocked an eyebrow at Fury. "How did you know we were going out?" he asked.

"I'm not stupid Barton, I know the date. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that an Irish person is going to go out on Saint Patrick's Day, no matter what amount of trouble they're in."

Clint's curious smile dropped and Katie smirked. He remembered that he hadn't been able to figure it out earlier on in the day.

Katie sighed and nodded to Fury, who returned it, before she pulled Clint out of the door.

XxX

It was 6 in the evening when Clint and Katie made it back to the tower. They parked up the car and made their way up to the social level.

They walked out of the lift and stopped.

"Bruce?" Katie said without even thinking about controlling the word coming out of her mouth.

Bruce banner was sat on the sofa with Tony sat next to him, they had been talking and smiling until Katie had spoken. Bruce looked up, smiled and made his way over with Tony at his side.

The doctor looked almost back to normal; he had dark bags under his eyes, presumably from lack of sleep, but other than that he looked healthy.

"Hey guys." He greeted.

"How are you feeling?" Katie asked.

Bruce thought for a moment. "Not dead, thanks to you and Tony." He looked over to the billionaire and they smiled.

"That's great." Katie said and her gaze moved from Bruce to Tony. Clint asked Bruce a question but Katie didn't notice as her eyes locked with Tony's. Bruce and Clint began talking and this gave Katie and Tony a chance to just keep staring at each other. Katie took a moment to admire Tony's dark Levi jeans and led Zeppelin tee shirt. _Why did everything fit him so well?_ His hair was perfectly styled into the little flick his hair naturally moved to. She then looked to Tony face again and smiled at the smirk on Tony's lips. Then his eyes. _How could a colour like brown be so emotive and deep?_ She could have gotten lost in his eyes.

"So Katie," Clint's voice pulled her out of the trance. "Where are we going?"

"Going?" Katie asked herself quietly. She had temporarily forgotten the date; in fact she had forgotten almost everything. "Oh yes! It's just a little bar; it's the best Saint Patricks place I've been to since being in the states."

"Wait!" Tony said as he looked between the agents. "We're going to a bar?" Katie nodded. "And Fury's let you?"

"If he hadn't I would have just snuck out anyway." She said with a smirk.

Tony smiled. "Are we all going?"

Katie shrugged. "If everyone wants to come. It's nowhere fancy, a jeans and shirt will suffice."

"Ok, JARVIS?" Tony shouted.

"_Yes sir?"_

"Tell Steve and Thor that we're going out."

"_Of course sir."_

Bruce scratched the back of his head. "I don't think it'd be best if I went to a place where I will be in a small room with lots of drunken Irish people."

Katie cringed with a chuckle. "Oh yeah, good point. You staying here then?" she asked,

"I think so."

Katie nodded to him as the elevator doors opened to reveal Thor and Steve.

"The mystical voice from the ceiling told us we are destined to go somewhere. But where be we going?"

"It's a special day in every Irish person's calendar, it's kind of important that I celebrate."

Steve thought for a moment before realisation flooded him. "Oh yeah! The 17th is Saint Patrick's day!"

Katie nodded with a smile. "Yup."

Steve took a breath but shrugged. "Sure, I'm up for it."

Thor straightened up. "If it is a celebration then I wish to attend."

Katie smiled. "Well the more the merrier. It should be fun."

The avengers, minus Bruce and Natasha, got changed for going out. Katie changed into a pair of faded-from-wear jeans and a grey Donegal football club tee shirt with dark green converse. Thor managed to find a button up shirt that actually fit him and Steve simply changed into a shirt with a pair of light trouser. Tony also changed into a shirt but he kept the same high top trainers on.

They all said goodbye to Bruce and told him not to wait up for them.

Katie drove, as she knew where she was going, with Clint next to her in the SHIELD car. Tony, Thor and Steve were in the back seats.

Steve and Tony were all but kissing the windows as they were pushed up against them by the width of Thor's shoulders.

Katie had to stop looking at them in the rear-view mirror because she knew that she would laugh and lose concentration on the road.

"This better be worth it." Tony said around an hour after they started driving. He attempted to push himself off of the window which ultimately resulted in Steve's face being squished against the opposing window.

Katie just smirked.

Around 5 minutes later, Katie pulled the car into a car park. When she unlocked the doors, Tony and Steve burst out both sides without being able to stop themselves. Thor looked at them questioningly and Tony glared at him as he got out.

Katie chuckled and then led the group around the front of the pub. _'Murphy's Irish sports bar' _was the name of the bar and the sign was in big green traditional writing.

There were 4 foldable panels of glass as a window and from what Tony could see the bar wasn't very interesting; that was an understatement- the bar was all but d_ead_.

There was a single, bald man behind a bar, drying a glass with a battered tea towel.

"This doesn't look _worth it_." Tony said. "Is this it?"

Katie looked over to him. "How much do you wanna bet that your gonna eat those words within 10 minutes?" she asked.

"25 bucks." He was prepared for a bet and Katie smiled as they shook hands. She walked inside with confidence. There was nobody else in the bar before the group walked in. There was a snooker table in the centre of the room with hazy orange lights above it and high, circular tables around the edge of the room.

"It's a bit empty isn't it Ginger?" Katie said with a smile.

The bald man looked up. "Hey Lucky!" He placed the glass down and outstretched his arms. "We thought you weren't going to make It." he said. "Hey catty!" he called behind him. "We got Lucky." Katie smiled at the ironic nickname as Ginger's wife shouted a celebration from the back room.

Ginger walked forward to Katie and they embraced in a hug. It was a meaningful hug; like that of lifelong friend that had been reunited after a long time apart. Ginger pulled away but kept him arms on Katie's shoulders. A few words were exchanged in Gaelic before he looked to the people behind Katie. "And who are these fellows?" he asked.

Katie smiled and pointed to each person. "Thor, Steve, Tony and Clint."

"They got nicknames? It can get a big complicated if you call someone and they share a name with somebody."

"Um, sure." Katie thought of nicknames off of the top of her head. "Thor, Private, Playboy and Hawk." Each person smiled at their names as Ginger stepped forward and shook each of their hands.

"You might want to buy your first drinks, it's pretty busy tonight."

Tony frowned. "Busy? We're the only ones here."

Ginger smiled at him and then looked to Katie. "Well he's certainly got the brains of a Playboy."

Katie smirked. "I'll take a Guinness."

Everyone else ordered and hung around the bar as Ginger and Katie caught up. The breaks on a police patrol car squeaked as the car pulled up and 2 officers got up.

Ginger looked up. "shite." He said under his breath and confusion flashed across everyone's faces except Katie's; she just grabbed Tony's bourbon and downed it.

Tony looked at her in surprise with a _what-the-hell _look. Katie passed the empty glass to Ginger as the two officers walked in. "It's a bit empty in here for Paddy's day."

It was clear that Ginger knew and disliked these police officers. "It's hard to attract people in when I've got you walking in every half an hour, Albert."

"Ah well I'm sure it's not just us that's driving off your customers."

Katie squinted her eyes at his comment. The other officer looked over to Tony. "Aren't you underage son?" the other officer said, clearly recognising the billionaire and moving closer to Tony.

"He's not drinking." Katie stated clearly. The officer named Albert stepped in.

"Did he ask you?"

Katie glared at him and stepped forward. "No, he didn't. But I feckin answered, so why don't you clear out?" she gestured towards the door with a somewhat violent movement.

The second- nameless- police officer stood towards Katie and invaded her personal space. He was a short man and had to look up to her.

The avengers all put their drinks down and got ready to do something if everything got out of hand.

"I think you're hiding something, little girl." He said quietly.

"But you can't do anything about it because you have no proof. So get out!" she defended herself.

Ginger spoke up after a minute. "She's right boys, clear off."

The police officer bit his cheek. "I can arrest you under suspicion." He said and grabbed Katie's wrist. Katie wasn't fazed by the threat of prison _or_ the police officer grabbing her.

Tony, who had been stood next to Katie, stepped in. He placed his body between Katie and the police officer. The officer had needed to look up to Katie but it was nothing compared to him trying to look at Tony.

"You're gonna want to get out now." he said, putting on an Irish accent. He didn't look at the officer, just looked straight over his head.

"And who are you? Her boyfriend?" he asked.

Tony finally made eye contact. "No, I'm her brother." He lied and everyone, including Katie, smiled at his clever thinking.

The tormenting smile dropped from the officer's face; practically everybody knew not to mess with Irish family.

Katie felt the man's grip loosen on her wrist and finally disappear. "c'mon Brian." Albert said. "I think we've outstayed our welcome."

Ginger nodded. "I think you're right."

Albert and Brian both went to leave but Brian turned around as he got to the door. "We'll be back on the next patrol Ginger." He warned.

Ginger smiled. "Looking forward." He said. The officer _harrumphed_ but left nonetheless.

The waited until the police car had left before they all relaxed. Tony finally stepped away from in front of Katie and turned around. "Are you alright?" he asked worriedly.

Katie smiled genuinely. "Yeah, course. Good acting." She said.

"Good self restriction." Clint said from a few seats away. "I could practically feel you wanting to punch him; I could definitely imagine you being dragged away for assaulting a police officer."

Everyone chuckled and it lightened the mood. "I wouldn't be the only person on Paddy's day."

They all turned towards the bar where Ginger had prepared another drink for Tony.

"Why did you drink my first drink?" Tony asked Katie.

"You're Tony Stark." Katie said. "Everybody knows who you are and therefore, everybody knows you're underage. We would have all been taken down if you were caught with a drink in your hand. Better safe than sorry."

Tony took his drink off of Ginger. "How bout we get you guys to the real party?" he asked as he leaned on the bar.

Katie smiled. "If you could." Ginger gestured for them to follow him behind the bar. Tony, Steve and Thor followed with confusion and somewhat caution.

"Follow the stairs all the way down and it's the third door on your left.

Tony watched with confusion as Katie thanked Ginger and then began descending the stairs.

The group followed gingers directions and found the door. Lively music was playing from inside. "Well it sounds about right." Katie said before pushing open the door.

Tony definitely ate his words.

_**Tell me what you thought. PLEASE! Comments are definitely welcome. I've been listening to a guy called Frank Turner lately. I would normally listen to rock music but this music is more folk-y. I'm blaming my Irish roots on this latest obsession. Anyway, if you're interested in that kind of thing, check him out. I recommend- If Ever I Stray, love Ire and Song, Substitute, I Still Believe and Balthazar Impresario. Check him out if you're interested.**_

_**Still open to Constructive Criticism and please, please, please comment. **_


	12. Chapter 12

_**This is CHAPTER 12! It's something of a filler chapter but there are a few little bits I'm quite proud of. I finally got my laptop back and I can type so much better now.**_

_**Thank you to 'DraigCochCymraeg' (I hope I spelt it right). I know quite a bit about the attitude of both Irish and Welsh. I'm just over half Irish, quarter welsh and only about a fifth English but it's the Irish part I'm most proud of. Thank you also to 'JustFraser' for your review, and 'frenchie121' for all of your reviews. **_

_**To anyone who reads this, please review! Reviews keep me going so much, it brings such a big smile to my face by hearing your support. **_

Tony, Katie and Clint were sat around the small table with several other Irish people and at least 20 pints of various alcoholic drinks. Fast paced music filled the room from the band of people in the corner and there were various plaques of Irish prophesy's, slogans and saying nailed all around the room. The walls were panelled with dark glazed wood. There were vents in the room to try and keep some kind of air circulation inside. There was the main room with the bar where the band was playing and there was also a room to the right where most people were congregating. It wasn't like a modern 'party'; it was more like a gathering with music and singing. There lights were up and there was nothing elaborate.

Each player at the table had a hand of cards and was sneakily looking around at the other people. The man nicknamed Tiger, whose turn it was before Katie, placed some cards face-down. "2 aces." He said before looking back down his cards.

"Bullshit!" Katie said and reached forward to turn over his cards. She was right; he had placed a queen and a Jack down.

The man sighed and began gulping down the closest pint to him.

Katie smirked.

'Bullshit'- as it is appropriately called- is a simple game of bluffing and calling bluffs. Considering Katie seemed to be specially trained in psychology personal analysis, everyone on the table, who had fallen victim to her at least once, made it their special mission to call her bluff correctly. None had succeeded.

Katie placed her chosen cards face-down. "3 sevens." Everyone looked at their own cards.

"Bullshit." Clint accused.

Katie's eyes seemed to smile before it spread down to her lips and she turned her cards over; 3 sevens. It appeared that only Tony had noticed that her eyes smiled before her lips. He looked up to see the plaque. _'When Irish eyes are smiling, we're up to something.' _Tony smiled before looking down to his cards once more.

Clint groaned and took a pint and glugged it down.

"You have to be cheating." Tony said.

"It's not cheating . . . its tactics." She said without looking up from her cards.

The Irish men looked between Katie and the two American boys; the men were all smiling.

"How can you have tactics in a guessing game?"

"Shhh." She stopped him from talking, still without looking up.

Clint placed 2 cards down. "2 queens."

Katie looked up to him and squinted at his facial expression. _To bluff or not to bluff?_ She couldn't decide if he was lying or not. He looked at her and cocked an eyebrow as if to say _'are you going to let me get away with this?'_

"Bull shit." She said.

Clint smiled and Katie closed her eyes, knowing she'd made a wrong call. 2 queens.

Katie wasn't too bothered, she decided that she would gain more dignity by downing a drink and not getting drunk but she would lose dignity if Clint had bluffed and Katie hadn't called it.

The game soon ended when they realised that 3 people passing out was enough and nobody really cared who had won due to the alcohol they had consumed.

Katie grabbed one of the leftover drinks and made her way to a table in the corner. She watched the space where people were dancing. Girls who had been bought up Irish were always keep dancers and some knew dances from as early as the 20's. Steve was more than happy to dance once he found this out. There were probably 9 or more girls who knew dances from the 40's but the girl Steve was dancing with at that certain point had been dancing with him for the previous 4 songs.

Katie smiled. She had met the brunette girl before. Her name was Sarah, like many others in the room, but she was nicknamed Sparrow due to her amazing singing voice. If she was honest, Katie herself could sing but Sparrow was at least twice as good as her.

Tony sat next to Katie with a sigh. "Hey playboy." Katie greeted as she took a gulp of the drink. Tony rolled his eyes.

"Yeah, thanks to you I've got everyone calling me that."

"And it'll stick. But, I mean, c'mon. My nickname's Lucky, _the_ most ironic name in the _history_ of ironic names."

Slight confusion flashed across Tony's face. "How's it ironic?"

Katie smiled and looked over to him. "I thought you were supposed to be clever."

Tony looked up in thought. "I've been drinking, cut me some slack." He said shrugged.

Katie sighed. "It's ironic because I'm hardly the most _lucky _person on the planet am I?" she picked up her drink and looked straight forward.

Tony leant his elbow on the table and rested his head on his palm. "You know _me_." he said somewhat seductively. "_That's_ pretty lucky."

Katie looked over to him with a disbelieving expression. "Wow," she said as she put her drink down. "Vain and narcissistic, all in the same sentence."

Tony looked at her with big brown eyes and threw her a lopsided smile. "You know you love it." he said with the same tone.

Katie's amused expression dropped and so did Tony's. They both paused. Katie looked over Tony's face and smiled inside at the small collection of hair that had escaped his gel before he had come out and was dangling over his forehead.

Katie could feel him getting closer to her. He gently moved off of his palm and moved his hand over to her arm. His touch almost made her shiver at how unnaturally soft he was.

She breathed softly and leant in too.

She could practically feel his lips on hers when there was a loud noise and the table shook as a drunken man stumbled against it as his friend couldn't manage to hold him up.

Both Katie's and Tony's pints toppled towards them. They both shot up and Tony raised his eyebrows as Katie yelled in Gaelic at the man who was now stood up and looking around confused.

Tony watched as the man focused on Katie, replied in the same language and Katie's annoyed expression disappeared and the two shook hands and the man went on his way.

Tony chuckled slightly. "How do you do that?"

Katie looked over at him. "Do what?"

"Forgive someone like that?" a barman was already over to clean up the liquid that was dripping off of the table.

Katie shrugged. "We're Irish. He apologised, managed to remember the language so all was forgiven."

The two managed to pull two chairs on that hadn't been covered in beer and sat down again.

"You never said why people call you lucky?"

Katie sighed. "Are we back to this again?" Tony nodded. "Because it was lucky that I dodged into gingers bar."

Confusion flickered over Tony again. "Why did you need to _dodge_ into gingers bar?"

Katie sighed and rubbed her face- almost wondering if it was a good idea that she should tell him. "I was running from the police." She said quickly to stop doubt from overcoming her.

Tony seemed to temporarily sober up. "The police?! What for?!"

"I was in a fight at a bar where I managed to slip a handgun off of the guy."

"And?"

"The police caught me with a loaded gun."

Tony smiled; he was actually interested in Katie's story. "How did you get out of that one?" The music in the back ground from the folk band was still drifting through the bar and it was just quiet enough for the two to hear each other.

Katie gave a lopsided smile. "I ran into here. Apparently there's a bar just down the road that would have given me in without a second thought, so I was _lucky _that I ran in here instead of there."

"So Ginger let you stay here?"

Katie smiled into the distance before focusing back on Tony. "yeah but I was a bit untrusting of anyone at that point so I ran out of the back door and tried to go back to my bike to get away but the police were waiting for me." she said with a smile. "I was caught and taken to jail."

Tony's eyes widened. "So you were found with a loaded gun and then caught and taken to jail? Now I'm really interested. What happened after that?"

Katie _huffed_. "I stayed 12 hours in jail before I managed to convince them to look back at the CCTV of the bar where I had taken to gun. They saw that I had managed to possibly stop a dangerous man from walking around with a loaded gun."

"So you just got out?"

Katie scoffed. "No, my bail had already been set."

Tony looked confused. "So who got you out."

Katie smiled. "Fury."

Tony's eyes widened and his jaw dropped slightly. "_Fury _bailed you out?"

Katie shrugged. "Well technically Coulson came to get me but SHIELD wouldn't let Fury use the company's money to bail me out so he had to pay himself. Let's just say that Coulson soon got a call from Fury that he needed to pass onto me; it's not too nice having an argument with someone who's putting _'motherfucking' _in between every other word."

Tony chucked at the last comment. "So you and Coulson are close then?"

Katie sighed and Tony watched as her shoulders raised and fell with the deep breath. "Well Coulson had bailed me out twice before that and has bailed me out 3 times since then."

"And that's why you weren't fazed when the police showed up earlier?"

"Yeah, but Coulson pretty much raised me from the ages of 10 to 14."

Tony cocked his head. "So you were trained by Coulson?"

Katie smiled. "Yeah, things were pretty bad when I was found and I was in a pretty messed-up condition." she looked down, not wanting to meet Tony's eyes.

"How bad?" she looked up and this time she cocked her head. She hadn't expected him to want to know more. She smiled slightly at the fact that for the first time someone was genuinely interested in her past. She would have told him about it but new it wasn't really a conversation to discus on Saint Patrick's Day.

She shrugged. "Ah, it doesn't matter. I'll tell you at some point."

Tony smiled almost reassuringly. "C'mon you can tell me."

Katie scoffed. "no." She said with a smile.

Tony suddenly saw Katie's fingers tapping systematically on her leg. Tony reached for his drink. "Guinness." He said before taking a mouthful of his pint.

Katie looked to him. "I'm sorry?" she asked like she had misheard him.

Tony swallowed his drink and looked to her before calmly repeating. "Guinness."

Katie realised she had heard him correctly and she looked around to the bar where the bartender was taking care with pouring pints of Guinness and lining them up so people didn't have to wait. She looked back to Tony. "Are there not enough?" she asked.

Tony chuckled. "I thought you never forgot anything?" she looked at him unimpressed so he carried on. "Not that type of _'Guinness'_, you're tapping your leg."

Katie looked down to where her index and middle finger were lightly drumming on her thigh. Katie rolled her head in realisation. "Ah, I get it- '_Guinness' _as in the quirk word."

Tony nodded and smiled. Katie smiled back but suddenly looked around when he heard a hearty laugh from somewhere across the other side of the room. She snapped her head around and spotted who she was looking for. She smiled to herself.

"Katie. Are you alright?" Tony asked, slightly shocked by her sudden move.

She turned to look back at him with happiness on her face that made Tony even more confused. "Yeah fine." She grabbed her drink and downed the last few gulps. She placed the glass back down. "Now if you'll excuse me, I've got some catching up to do."

She stood up before Tony could say anything. She made her way to the bar to purchase another pint of Guinness before walking through the crowd that was stood listening to the band. Tony craned his neck to see where she was going. He felt himself sink as Katie walked up to a young man. They looked at each other in shock and amazement and then hugged.

Tony swallowed and slumped. Why did he even bother?

He drank the rest of his drink before sighing and making his way to the bar. He wanted something stronger than lager.

The boy Katie had gone to see was nicknamed 'Bulldog'. He was tall and muscled and was wearing a shirt and black trousers with thin braces over his shoulders. He looked nothing like a Bulldog. He had high cheekbones, a straight nose and thin cheeks with slightly sunken eyes. He was only nicknamed Bulldog because the first time he visited the bar, he had taken his English Bulldog with him.

"How the feck have you been?" he asked, holding Katie at arm's length to get a good look at her.

Katie shrugged. "Ah, so and so."

Bulldogs name was actually Cieron O'Mason. Katie and Cieron had known each other for years; he knew her back in Ireland. SHIELD had reported that Katie and her family had been found dead after a gas leak at their home. The only people that had known differently were Sarah, Dermot and their separate families. SHIELD had warned them that if they breathed a word that Katie might possibly still be alive then it could put her and them in grave danger. The Irish may be light hearted and occasionally drunkards but they are nothing if not loyal. When Katie first came into the bar, Cieron had been there and recognised her straight away. He too was made to promise not to say anything.

"How about you?" Katie asked.

"Not too bad, not too bad." He trailed off towards the end of the sentence as he let go of her shoulders and looked into the distance before looking back to her. "My ma might have got cancer again." he said in his thick Irish accent.

Katie looked at her friend with concern and sympathy. "Aw, next time you see her tell her I send my regards. I hope she gets better soon."

Bulldog shrugged and they both sat down at a small table. "She's fought it before, I'm sure she'll be fine." Katie smiled at his optimism. "So who are the people you dragged along with you?" Bulldog said as he looked over to where Tony, Clint and Thor had congregated in the corner.

Katie scoffed. "I didn't _drag _anyone along. I mentioned alcohol and they all came willingly." She smiled and took a sip of the Guinness.

"Like mice to a trap." Bulldog said quietly. Katie heard and chuckled.

"It's a good comparison." She said. "But the cheese in the trap was the girls they saw when they came in."

Bulldog smiled. "Ah, but I'm pretty sure Playboy just followed you." He looked over to where Tony was sat in the corner with Clint and Thor with a glass of whiskey in front of him.

Katie turned to see Tony and sighed. He looked annoyed and somewhat sad. She was pretty sure that he was annoyed at whatever was on the screen of his phone but he was sad at something else.

Bulldog leaned into her ear. "Oh, somebody's struggling with angry birds." He said quietly in a sing song voice.

Katie looked somewhat shocked at his comment and stared at him in a _what-the-hell-are-you-talking-about?_ Kind of way. She just scoffed and took a sip of her drink. She looked up to him. "Why don't you come and meet them?" she asked.

Bulldog pulled air through his teeth. "I'm not too sure that's a great idea."

Katie cocked her head. "Well why not?" she asked.

"I don't normally get along with their sort of people."

Katie frowned. "There's nothing wrong with _their kind _of people. What do you mean anyway?"

"I don't get along with yanks, Katie." He said with rising annoyance in his voice.

"Well what the feck are you doing here then? You're in _America _Cieron. It's the situation you're in, suck it up." She matched his tone, grabbed her drink and took a glug before glaring at Bulldog. He glared back at her.

The stared off continued for at least a minute before Bulldog backed down. Katie would have smiled but she really couldn't be bothered. "Now c'mon, you're meeting them." She gestured for him to follow her as she made her way to where the boys were sat.

Tony looked up and had to stop himself from sending a horrible glance at the boy who was trailing behind Katie.

Clint and Thor looked up to Katie and the boy who was reluctantly following her. "Boys, this is Cieron otherwise known as Bulldog."

Clint smiled. "I know . . . I've seen his file."

Bulldog cocked and eyebrow. "I have a _file_?"

"Everyone does." Clint said before sticking his hand out for Bulldog to shake. He accepted and Bulldog actually smiled.

"It is nice to meet a friend of Katie's." Thor boomed and Bulldog leaned back slightly before Thor grabbed him by the shoulders and pulled him into a friendly hug.

Katie had to hide a snigger as Bulldogs eyes widened and his face began going red because he couldn't breathe.

Thor soon released him and Bulldog had to catch himself on a chair before he could make sure the world was no longer spinning.

Katie turned around to see Steve walking over with Sparrow closely in tow.

Bulldog turned to look at the two people. "Sparrow." He acknowledged with a straight face.

The girl's joyful expression dropped and she simply nodded.

Katie cringed slightly. She knew about the tension between Sparrow and Bulldog. It was no lie that Cieron was good looking and Sparrow thought so too. They were in a relationship for almost two years before something happened and they never spoke properly again.

Sparrow looked at Katie with almost pleading eyes. She tried to think of a way to stop Steve and Bulldog from meeting. But Thor did that for her.

The sound of glugging could be heard and everyone turned to see Thor downing his eleventh pint.

"Um . . . Thor?" Katie said, unsure of what to do but he stopped her before she could continue by yelling at the top of his lungs.

"I love this drink!" he shouted and placed the empty glass violently down on the table before making ashit-faced gurgling noise and collapsing on the wooden floor.

The Avengers looked at each other and all spoke in chorus. "I think it's time to go."

_**Ok, so it's the last day of school tomorrow before the Christmas break and I'm hoping- though it's unlikely- to get chapter 13 up before Christmas. I'm quite looking forward to the chapter after this one because it is one of the chapters that fit perfectly in with all the other scenes I have in my head. That's one of the reason this chapter took so long to upload, this is one of the chapters that's leading up to an important scene.**_

_**Hope you enjoyed it. PLEASE REVIEW! PLEASE FAVOURITE! PLEASE FOLLOW! **_

_**P.S I'm going to have to start revising for GCSE's soon so it may be a while between a few chapters later on. **_


	13. Chapter 13- Problems

_**Hey! Sorry it took so long. I had almost all of it done and then got a bit distracted. But I managed to finish it. from this chapter onwards, things should start getting more exciting. I know there's a tonne of characters to keep on top of but at some point it will get a lot easier. **_

_**Anyway, here's chapter 13!**_

It took Clint, Katie, Tony and Steve almost half an hour to all but drag Thor up the stairs and eventually outside. They all looked at each other thoughtfully about where to put him. He couldn't go into the back seats because he could likely crush someone and he definitely couldn't go in the front passenger seat because his floppiness would distract Katie.

"You want to know what I think?" Katie asked looking to the other 3 boys. They looked back to her expectantly as she crossed her arms over her chest and leant back to take a proper look at the situation. "I say we put him in the boot."

The boys looked to each other and shrugged. "Sure." They said together.

A few moments later and they had managed to haul Thor into the boot of the car.

Katie was back to driving. Clint was sat next to her and Steve and Tony were in the back. Tony had moved so that his back was against the car door so his knees were resting on the middle seat and his head was gently lolled against the seat. Within minutes he was asleep. He looked unnaturally calm and Katie couldn't help but smile as she occasionally glanced at him through the rear view mirror.

Steve didn't need to go to sleep- although not that he specifically _needed_ to. He couldn't really allow himself to go to sleep anyway as every few minutes he would turn in his seat to check on Thor.

After around 10 minutes of driving, Clint turned to Katie. "So did you drink enough to not remember this in the morning?"

Katie smiled but though for a second. "No, I don't think so but it'll be fun watching Tony and Thor with hangovers."

Clint chuckled before leaning his head against the wheel and closing his eyes. Katie began to concentrate fully on the road before Clint moved again and looked at Steve who had some earphones in and was trying to get the hang of playing music. Once Clint had checked that Steve couldn't hear them and that Tony was still asleep, he turned to Katie and asked her something that he had wanted to ask since she had turned up. "Why haven't you unpacked your things?"

Katie seemed temporarily shocked by his inquiry and she seemed to stare into the distance for a moment. She took a deep breath. "I . . . um . . . I." She sighed. "Do you remember when I was first let out of that cell at SHIELD when I was 11?"

"Uh, yeah?" Why?"

"Well do you remember how as soon as I got some clothes, I packed them into a bag and hid them?"

"The bag you hid near the door?" he asked.

"Yeah."

"What about it?"

"I'm so used to moving round that I can wake up in the morning, decide it's time to leave, have a shower and be gone within half an hour."

Clint cocked an eyebrow but there was sympathy mixed in. "so you knew you were going to want to run?"

Katie thought for a minute. "Yeah, I guess. Well you saw how messed up I was when you found me."

Clint scoffed. "_Messed up _is an understatement."

Katie looked at him, taken aback by his comment. "I'm trying to explain an answer to your question."

Clint shrugged. "Ok, carry on."

"Well when you start life on a secluded farm, surrounded by animals that your family have raised and the furthest you stray from home is they school that takes you 25 minutes to drive to, it a bit of a shock when you're tortured and you parents are killed in front of you. It makes you untrusting and you feel like stone. It's a weird feeling. You remember how I acted when you caught me and for several months after that."

Clint smiled. "Yeah, it took you 3 months to talk to anyone and even then it was just Natasha. It was another 2 months before you spoke to me and then eventually Coulson and Fury."

Katie smirked. "I think Tony, Steve, Bruce and Thor are the first people I've trusted almost straight away in at least 7 years."

Clint looked down in thought. "That's a long time to go without trust Katie."

Katie smiled sadly over at him but didn't reply.

Both of them had thought it was a private conversation, neither of them had noticed that Tony had woken up and had heard the whole thing.

XxX

It was official; Tony Stark was fascinated by Katie. He needed to know about her. She was friendly and yet none of them knew hardly anything about her. He decided that he couldn't wait for her to decide when to tell them.

When the group got back to the tower, they dumped Thor on the sofa where Steve stayed with him. Katie and Clint went up to their rooms but Tony stayed on the social level with Bruce, Thor and Steve. He waited until Katie was well out of sight before he pulled his phone out and began his hacking job.

Within minutes he was into the SHIELD database and after another 5 minutes, he had found Katie's file.

"Tony?" he heard Bruce from his side. "What are you doing?"

Tony didn't look up and answered with casual indifference. "I'm hacking Katie's SHIELD file." He opened the link and his eyes widened.

Katie had been laying in her bed carefully eying up the guitar in it's' case amongst her still packed bags. She just happened to pick up her phone and check the SHIELD base when a small red flashing cube appeared in the bottom right corner signalling a security breach. Katie knew there were only a few people who were able to hack SHIELD including her and she would bet all her money on Tony Stark.

After their little moment at the party Katie could also hazard a good guess at who he was researching.

She shot from the bed and moved straight to the elevator. She was more than annoyed with him. Where were his manners? When she made it to the floor she needed, she didn't even check Tony was there before she began yelling at him.

"What the feck do you think you're doing?!" her accent clearly coming through with her rage.

Tony seemed mostly unfazed by her outburst and was just as quick to retaliate. "I think the question is what the fuck do youthink _you're_ doing?" he said as he stood up. They met in the middle and the stare off began.

Steve, Bruce and –the now awake- Thor, were staring at the two teenagers.

"Guys, what's going on?" Steve asked.

Tony turned to him. "Do you remember how she said she was treated as a threat more that an ally when she first came to SHIELD?"

Steve nodded. "Yeah, what about it?"

Tony threw his phone to Steve who efficiently caught it before Tony looked back to Katie and spoke again. "Well _'threat'_ is an understatement."

Steve looked at the screen where there was a picture of Katie. He squinted with confusion and then he looked from the picture, to Katie, to the picture again.

Katie knew what picture they were looking at. It had been taken when she had first arrived at SHIELD. It was the one that had _'unstable' _printed over the front of it with the caption _'if no improvement is seen within the space of an extra two months then an elimination order can be filed.'_

Katie sighed and looked down. "I improved slightly, 2 days before the order was to be filed. Clint and Coulson had to persuade Fury that it was good enough." Katie looked up to Tony. "But why the feck is that any of your business?!" she said in the same quiet voice but with anger and bitterness more apparent.

"It's my business because you're supposed to be part of our team." Tony said easily. "How can you be part of the team if we know nothing about you? You know all this stuff about us and we know next to nothing about you! I mean, we don't even know what you do!" he was shouting by this point and Katie had no intention of being submissive.

"What I do?!" she yelled back. "What does it matter _what I do!? _I tell you what got me into this fecking mess in the first place but _apparently _you need to know more. You don't care that maybe it was a push for me to even tell you about what happened when I was 10."

"Trust, Katie! That's what made me want to know more! I had a slight bit of trust for you but I didn't know why. _You _tell me why, Katie! Tell me why I was going to trust you! Tell me why I _should _trust you! Because we barely know anything about you!"

Katie moved back. "But you know stuff about me!" she shouted. "You're the first people I have told about the Testers since I made the official statement to Fury! That was 8 years ago!" she was using her arms to exaggerate her point.

"What does that matter if we don't know the full story?!"

Katie was really pissed off and she could feel her eyes glowing but Tony didn't care; he wasn't threatened by Katie's eyes, or the fact that he could see her whole body tensing. It may have been the alcohol but for him the amount he had consumed that evening wasn't even a quarter of what he would normally drink. He could hear her breathing; she swallowed, anger still evident on her face, and got right in his face.

He may not have been intimidated but with her right in his face, he couldn't help but move backwards. She pushed him right against the wall and the tension in the room rose immediately.

"Tony Stark . . ." she took a shaky breath and her eyes began to go back to normal. She opened her mouth to speak but decided against it. "You're not even worth it." she said eventually before turning on her heels towards Steve. She took the phone off of him and searched Tony's file and found what she was looking for. She threw the phone to Tony and began to walk away. "You're not so perfect yourself Stark." she said as she pushed her hands into her pocket and walked back into the elevator.

Tony looked down to the phone. "After fair evaluation, Tony Stark was found to be unsuitable for the Avengers Initiative although he agreed to be a consultant to the team. It was agreed by members of the SHIELD team that Stark was volatile, narcissistic and could –on some occasions- be classed as a risk more than an ally." Tony didn't know whether to smile and scold himself for his narrow-mindedness.

Katie knew that Clint wouldn't still be in his room so she went to the training room. She needed to talk to someone and since Natasha was somewhere unknown, Clint would have to do. She was still fuming after her collision with Tony and hoped that she could possibly fire her gun towards a body target while she vented to Clint.

"Hello? . . . what the feck?!" she shouted as she walked in.

She hadn't even looked around the room before she set eyes on Natasha and Clint . . . lip-locked . . . against the wall.

The two agents looked up in shock and straightened themselves up.

Katie gawked as she looked between the redhead and the archer. She opened her mouth several times to speak but no sound came out. Sure, she was happy because it was obvious that the two had a _thing_ but they couldn't have picked a worse time to admit their feelings.

Katie threw her arms up in defeat and walked away.

"Katie, wait." Natasha shouted after her. Katie just groaned and she was halfway down the corridor before Natasha caught up with her. "Katie, what do you want me to say?" she grabbed her by the shoulder and physically turned her.

"Nothing, nat. I don't want you to say anything. In fact, I'm happy for you." She shrugged with indifference.

"Katie I can tell when you lie."

"Fine, fine! You want to know what's wrong?! That dip-shite Stark has just hacked my SHIELD file-"

"He did what?!"

Katie ignored Natasha's interruption and just kept talking. "He found out that I was _unstable_ so I come up here to rant to Clint because you've practically disappeared off of the face of the planet and I find you two sucking each others' faces off. Why are you back? Shouldn't you be off on your secret mission? Shouldn't-"

"Katie," Natasha grabbed her friends' arms. "Calm the hell down! Just . . . _chill_."

Katie groaned loudly and sank immediately to the ground with a loud _thump_. Natasha rolled her eyes but joined her friend on the floor against the wall.

Natasha listened while Katie vented about Tony and soon began talking about affairs before she had joined the avengers; started talking about how she had lived for the past 4 years. Natasha listened to it all and watched with pity and somewhat awe at Katie stories. Natasha took pride in the fact that Katie could let everything out to her without any persuasion.

XxX

The tension between Tony and Katie was still apparent the next day. At 5.30 in the morning, Katie completely ignored the fact that Tony was topless in the kitchen again before she went out for her run and when she came back Tony made an attempt to talk to her but she stared at him, sighed and walked away.

When it was time to leave for school, Katie pulled her leathers on and sped off and all Tony could do was watch her leave.

"Nice going, Stark." Clint said to him before him and Natasha got into the car. Tony looked over to him with an exasperated sigh before him and Bruce got into the Audi.

"She was really pissed off at him Clint." Natasha said as they got out of the car. "I don't think I've ever seen her so pissed."

"I have." Clint said simply. Natasha fell silent and Clint continued. "She held a grudge against me for 4 months after I took her to SHIELD after the Testers."

Natasha granted him that point. When Katie was let out of her cell when she was deemed 'stable', every agent of SHEILD had to make sure that Clint and Katie didn't cross paths. They managed to keep it up for 2 months but the two eventually ran into each other, there had been a tense few seconds where Clint didn't lift his hand off of the compulsory gun he had been made to carry around but all that Katie said was 'thank you' before she carried on her way.

Clint smiled at the memory and the two agents began walking towards the school. They went round the back of the school and checked that nobody was around before they started scaling the wall.

Natasha took a deep breath as she made it to the top and looked around. There was the car park and then the woods behind them. She felt hands on her waist and she smiled. She felt Clint's breath on her neck and her smile grew. She would have stayed but she suddenly realised something.

Katie was nowhere to be seen.

Katie still hadn't shown by lunchtime and Clint and Natasha were worrying. They knew that her disappearance had nothing to do with SHIELD else they would know about it.

"Is she going to make a habit of being late?" Tony said, finally looking up from his phone for the first time that day. He was hung over and had rarely taken his sunglasses off that day.

Both agents glared at him and then looked back down the empty corridor that was directly in front of them.

Katie was walking towards them with a worn out expression on her face. She looked up to see the agents staring at somewhat surprise. "The bike got a flat tyre." She said so they could hear. She just saw the relieved expression on their faces before something blocked her view.

Her vision focused for her to see none other than Dean Russell. She was momentarily shocked and her body tensed. He was wearing a smile that looked like there was a lot more evil behind it than need be. She just stared at him for a moment.

"Hi, you're in my math class right?" he asked with a look that would have made a normal girl melt. Katie wasn't a normal girl and she wasn't really in the mood for anyone other than Natasha and Clint but she hid it.

"Yeah, I am." She said.

"And you're Irish right?" he asked her. She cocked her head slightly. Why would he want to know?

"Yeah, why?"

"Oh, just wondering. Wasn't sure if it was Irish or Scottish, I'm a bit crap with accents." He was acting completely normal.

Katie shrugged. "understandable." She smiled.

"Hey, so I was wondering if you wanted to meet up after school. I know this nice place we can go and hang out. Bring your friends back there. Just the red head and the one who's dating her, the others are a bit . . ." he pulled a cringe-y face and Katie chuckled.

"I know, they're a bit weird. Sounds fun. Where do you want to meet?" she asked.

"Ah," he shrugged. "Behind the science department, I can lead you to where we should go."

Katie smiled. "Ok, I'll be there."

"cool." He said before walking off.

She turned to her friends. Natasha, Clint and _Tony_ were standing up looking like they were ready to pull her out of a fight at any second. _Why Tony?_

Katie walked over to them with a somewhat confused look on her face.

"What did he want?" Clint asked.

Katie thought it over, like she had misheard the whole conversation. She was out of her act now and was extremely confused. "He wants to meet up after school; me, you and Natasha." She said like she wasn't believing what was coming out of her mouth.

"What are you going to do?" Tony asked.

Katie glared at him and Natasha and Clint both looked worriedly at each other. "Why do you care? I'm going to meet him, _obviously_."

Tony just laughed at himself and sat back down with an inaudible _huff_. All conversations were bought to an immediate ending when the bell rang for next lesson.

_PE, oh joy of joys._

_**So, what did you think? Please tell me. I'm thinking of starting a few other little things, but they won't be as major as this story. I've started a short Tony Stark's Daughter Fanfiction which will introduce his daughter and I may do a few other short ones to do with the other avengers children and I will bring them together in a big story when and if I get time. Another one I'm definitely doing is a Sherlock's Daughter Fanfiction. It will be from the BBC's version of Sherlock Holmes and I'm quite excited about it. it think her character should be interesting to write along with Tony Stark's daughter. Anyway, if you're interested, I'll tell you when they're up and you can check them out. This is still my main story and the others will be side projects so don't fret. **_

_**But please, tell me you like this story, if any of you actually do, because if others get better feedback then they'll get more updates. Please, please, please review and favourite and follow because it's keeping me going.**_

_**Until next time.**_


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